Y Combinator-backed Cashfree eyes global markets, fintech acquisition

When the pandemic struck, intracity logistics platform Porter was looking at a payments solution partner for its riders. It came across full stack payments solutions start-up Cashfree for instant payments via API to its driver-partners.
 
Dukaan also partnered Cashfree to enable digital customer payment collections and disbursals for merchants to set up digital stores.
 
Y Combinator-backed Cashfree, which has so far doubled its user base since the pandemic hit and has over 100,000 merchants making over 2 million transactions daily on the platform, is now eyeing international markets for its unique products, such as instant refunds and disbursements.

 

“We have been actively working on entering Asian and African markets since December and will be going live by next month,” said Akash Sinha, co-founder and chief executive officer, Cashfree.
 
It is expecting international revenue to make up 30 per cent of its total revenue in the next three years.
 
The company has already rolled out a solution around cross-border money movement through which businesses outside India can send money to beneficiaries in India instantly. It is also working towards catering to global travel companies to accept money from Indian customers via the platform.
 
“If India has to grow in terms of gross domestic product, it has to be export-driven. We want to partner remote exporters who have a hard time collecting their payments,” said Reeju Datta, co-founder, Cashfree.

 
The start-up, which has raised over $40 million so far, is also in talks to acquire an early stage start-up in the fintech space in the coming quarter.
 
The company, which has been profitable since its first year of operations, grew 130 per cent in terms of revenue for 2020-21, compared to the previous financial year, and is targeting 200-per cent growth this year.
 
Founded by Datta and Sinha in 2015 as a platform for restaurants to collect cash from customers, Cashfree has so far rolled out several innovations, such as Payouts and Cashgram, and counts Zomato, Acko, Delhivery, Nykaa, and BigBasket as its customers.

 
With the pandmeic catapulting the fintech sector to reach a valuation of $150 billion by 2025, Cashfree is scaling up on innovation to grab a larger piece of the market. It is putting systems in place to handle over 1,000 transactions in a second. “We are also working on a solution called Banking as a service, which will make banking accessible to a large number of businesses,” said Sinha.
 
In November 2020, the company had raised $35.3 million in Series B funding, led by UK's Apis Growth Fund II.