BharatPe has secured $370 million in a Series E funding round
Merchant payments and financial services provider BharatPe has secured $370 million in a primary and secondary mix in a Series E funding round. The funding round was led by New York-based Tiger Global Management.
Other new investors who participated in this round include Dragoneer Investment Group and Steadfast Capital. As a part of this round, Tiger Global infuse $100 million in the startup, with Dragoneer and Steadfast investing $25 million each.
Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Coatue Management, Amplo and Ribbit Capital have invested a total of $200 million in the company as a part of its current Series E fundraise.
With its valuation rising more than threefold to $2.85 billion in six months, BharatPe has become the latest entrant to India’s growing list of unicorn startups. The company had secured $108 million in February this year at a valuation of $900 million.
The company’s group president, Suhail Sameer, will assume the role of chief executive officer (CEO) and will be responsible for driving the company’s monetization, lending and recent banking foray. He will also join BharatPe’s board of directors.
BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover is now the managing director at the company and will continue driving its strategy, technology and product functions, as well as managing capital fundraising.
BharatPe will also use the funds to capitalize distressed Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank, in partnership with Centrum Financial Services. In June, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had cleared the takeover of PMC Bank by a joint consortium of Centrum and BharatPe.
BharatPe has disbursed nearly $300 million in financing to merchant partners till date and has an outstanding loan book of $100 million. It plans to scale its overall financing to $3 billion by March 2023 with an outstanding loan book of $1 billion.
The company aims to raise $700 million in debt capital over the next two years to facilitate this credit growth.
Nearly $10 billion in annual payment value is being processed on the BharatPe platform and the company looks to scale this to $30 billion by 2023.