ETtechBengaluru-based payment gateway Cashfree has raised $35 million in a Series B round led by private equity fund Apis Growth Fund II, and existing investor Y Combinator, valuing the five-year-old startup at around $200 million.
With this, the company’s total funding since inception has exceeded $42 million.
Akash Sinha, co-founder and CEO, told ET that the capital would be used predominantly for enhancing the product and technology as the company looks to scale its business, amid a growing propensity towards digital payments among consumers and businesses in India.
The company looks to hire afresh, develop new product verticals and make strategic investments as it anticipates the volume of payments it processes to grow multi-fold in the current fiscal year, said Sinha.
“Over the years, we have built a strong presence among enterprises by innovating for experience, scale, and security,” said Sinha, adding that in the previous financial year the company processed $12 billion worth annualized payments on its channel.
“We still see payments as an evolving industry with its own challenges, and we would be investing in next-gen payments as well as banking tech to make payments processing easier and more reliable,” he said.
For the ongoing fiscal year, Cashfree has set a target to treble its volumes and process close to $30 billion of annualized payments, Sinha added.
The company plans to achieve this by tapping into large businesses. It is also tweaking its product to make transactions smoother for small businesses who are new to the payment ecosystem.
The fundraising also comes at a time when the digital payments sector has seen a flurry of private equity deals with investors sensing an opportunity to make gains with banking channels clocking record volumes.
Rival payment gateway Razorpay entered the unicorn club earlier in October when it raised $100 million in a Series D round.
Unlike Razorpay, which is expanding its neo-banking business through merchant lending tie-ups, Cashfree said it sees payments as its core business, even as the aided financial services is “lucrative and can add good value to the business.”
Cashfree was founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta in 2015 and processes online payments for Indian businesses. The company is a 2017 alumnus of Y Combinator, the start-up incubator based in San Francisco.
It specializes in payment settlement processing transactions through channels and instruments including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI and popular wallets.
Cashfree claims to have clocked a revenue of Rs 100 crore last financial year.
“As digital payments proliferate globally, the Indian market continues to represent one of the most exciting opportunities that we see in the world,” said Udayan Goyal, Managing Partner, Apis.
“Cashfree has maintained a leadership position in this space and is now going through a period of rapid growth fuelled by the development of unique and innovative products that serve the needs of its customers,” Goyal, who is also the co-founder of Apis, said.
In recent years, Cashfree has expanded its offering to include bulk disbursal solution and an instant settlement feature that helps enterprises access funds within 15 minutes of payment capture compared to the industry standard of 2-3 business days.
With this, the company’s total funding since inception has exceeded $42 million.
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The company looks to hire afresh, develop new product verticals and make strategic investments as it anticipates the volume of payments it processes to grow multi-fold in the current fiscal year, said Sinha.
“Over the years, we have built a strong presence among enterprises by innovating for experience, scale, and security,” said Sinha, adding that in the previous financial year the company processed $12 billion worth annualized payments on its channel.
“We still see payments as an evolving industry with its own challenges, and we would be investing in next-gen payments as well as banking tech to make payments processing easier and more reliable,” he said.
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For the ongoing fiscal year, Cashfree has set a target to treble its volumes and process close to $30 billion of annualized payments, Sinha added.
The company plans to achieve this by tapping into large businesses. It is also tweaking its product to make transactions smoother for small businesses who are new to the payment ecosystem.
The fundraising also comes at a time when the digital payments sector has seen a flurry of private equity deals with investors sensing an opportunity to make gains with banking channels clocking record volumes.
Rival payment gateway Razorpay entered the unicorn club earlier in October when it raised $100 million in a Series D round.
Unlike Razorpay, which is expanding its neo-banking business through merchant lending tie-ups, Cashfree said it sees payments as its core business, even as the aided financial services is “lucrative and can add good value to the business.”
Cashfree was founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta in 2015 and processes online payments for Indian businesses. The company is a 2017 alumnus of Y Combinator, the start-up incubator based in San Francisco.
It specializes in payment settlement processing transactions through channels and instruments including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI and popular wallets.
Cashfree claims to have clocked a revenue of Rs 100 crore last financial year.
“As digital payments proliferate globally, the Indian market continues to represent one of the most exciting opportunities that we see in the world,” said Udayan Goyal, Managing Partner, Apis.
“Cashfree has maintained a leadership position in this space and is now going through a period of rapid growth fuelled by the development of unique and innovative products that serve the needs of its customers,” Goyal, who is also the co-founder of Apis, said.
In recent years, Cashfree has expanded its offering to include bulk disbursal solution and an instant settlement feature that helps enterprises access funds within 15 minutes of payment capture compared to the industry standard of 2-3 business days.
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