Razorpay's valuation triples to $3 bn in 6 months, raises $160 million

Razorpay becomes one of the most valuable B2B fintech start-ups

After becoming a unicorn last October, fintech company Razorpay has raised $160 million in a Series-E funding round. The financing round has helped the company’s valuation triple to $3 billion in less than six months.
 
This signals one of the fastest increases in valuation for an Indian unicorn (a start-up valued at more than $1 billion).
 
This round was co-led by existing investors GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and Sequoia India, along with participation from Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners.
 
The Bengaluru-based company, which focuses on business-to-business (B2B) customers, competes with players such as BillDesk, PayU and Paytm.
 
Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Razorpay, said the $3 billion valuation makes the company one of the most valuable B2B fintech start-ups. Razorpay plans to infuse the capital to scale up its business banking suite, invest in new acquisitions and launch in international markets such as South-East Asia. The Bengaluru-based firm is hiring more than 600 to fuel its growth plans.
 
“We have seen rapid growth in neo banking and lending that we launched in the last couple of months. We want to continue to double down on that,” said Mathur. He added, “We are also looking at a lot of inorganic growth in the form of mergers and acquisitions.”
 
Mathur said Razorpay wants to be the one-stop financial platform that a business needs to simplify and manage its end-to-end money movement. He said, “We have made some strides towards that journey.”

 
For instance, Razorpay’s recent initiatives in the banking and lending space through RazorpayX and Capital have helped businesses solve some very unique challenges around managing money.
 
This has empowered businesses to grow up to 10X in an economically challenging year.
 
Razorpay is investing in building new-age business banking solutions. Also, RazorpayX is changing the business of banking rapidly and intelligently, powering over 15,000 Indian businesses and their owners to manage their money.
 
The neo-bank saw 400 per cent growth in transaction volume in the last 12 months of Covid. In order to meet the increasing demand, a portion of the funds raised will be invested in RazorpayX to roll out new tailored products.
 
Businesses like Cred, Mobile Premier League (MPL) and Dunzo have turned to RazorpayX in the last few months. They are using features such as instant refunds and payouts to their customers and vendors, current accounts and real-time financial summaries. This is enabling control and visibility of their finances, automated payroll payments, group health insurance and working capital loans. The company has been disbursing credit of over Rs 700 crore per month. This is helping entrepreneurs get access to working capital. The firm plans to scale this up to Rs 1,000 crore per month by the end of 2021.
 
In the last six months, Razorpay witnessed a 40-45 per cent growth, month-on-month. The company plans to achieve $50 billion total payment volume (TPV) by the end of 2021 from the current $40 billion. This would help it to further solidify its position as one of the largest full-stack fintech companies in the country.