ItzCash investors make big bucks, sell 80% of the firm for Rs 800 cr

PE players Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture, Intel Capital exit at almost 5x their investments

Digital payments fintech firm ItzCash on Wednesday said that it has sold 80 per cent of the company's stake to US headquartered, Ebix, Inc., an international supplier of on-demand software and e-commerce services to the insurance, financial, e-governance and healthcare industries for Rs 800 crore. The remaining 20 per cent would be held by Essel Group, which is the main backer of the fintech firm.

The move has helped the early stage investors of the company, which include private equity players such as Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Intel Capital exit from the investment at almost five times the amount they put into the company. ItzCash in the last decade raised around $35 million.

"With this deal we have been able to give our early stage marquee investors a 3x to 5x return on their investment. Now with Ebix as the majority stake holder we would be looking at next stage of growth as well as global expansion," Naveen Surya, Managing Director, ItzCash said.

ItzCash claims to be the only payments solutions player which turned profitable this year, while having grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35 percent over the last three years.

ItzCash a financial exchange for payment solutions connects 75 million consumers and 1,500 corporate partners on its integrated payments solutions highway. With an omni-channel strategy that encompasses a distribution network of 75,000 physical retail outlets. It has done approximately Rs. 14,000 crore in payment volume in FY16-17 and processes approximately 600,000 transactions per day.

With more than offices across Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, the US and the UK, Ebix powers multiple exchanges across the world in the field of life, annuity, health and property & casualty insurance while conducting in excess of $100 billion in insurance premiums annually on its platforms.

ItzCash, plans to now promote a slew of financial services powered by Ebix and are aiming for a major expansion in India and globally where the US based company has a footprint.

ItzCash registered a revenue growth of 40 percent to Rs. 250 crore across all its business verticals in the current year. The company also plans to go for an IPO in the next three years. "We plan to go for an IPO and are working towards that. It could well be in the next three years," added Surya.

Founded in 2006, the company has since expanded into new businesses verticals such as remittances, financial services, corporate solutions, point of sale (POS) machines and payment gateway for diversified revenue stream. With the new investment by Ebix, the company is looking to foray into areas such as credit, insurance, healthcare and investments to accelerate growth momentum going forward.

Having deployed 25,000 point of sale machines in the last 5 months, the company intends to deploy 100,000 POS machines by the end of the year. At present, the company has partnerships with Visa, MasterCard, banks such as HDFC and ecommerce players such as Flipkart, BookMyShow, Uber, OYO rooms and IRCTC.