India’s BharatPe banks $6.9m from Trifecta Capital

January 22nd, 2021: BharatPe, founded in 2018, is a fintech firm headquartered in New Delhi. The company has raised 50 crore rupees (US$6.9 million) in debt from Trifecta Capital, a venture debt fund focused on new economy businesses. This latest fundraise marks the third tranche of BharatPe’s debt fund financing. The company recently raised 199 crore rupees (US$28 million) in debt from venture debt providers Alteria Capital and ICICI Bank. Investors who have backed the company in the past include Beenext, Sequoia, SteadView Capital, Ribbit Capital, Coatue Management LLC, Insight Partners, and Amplo. This brings the fintech firm’s total funds raised in January 2021 to 249 crore rupees (US$35 million).

The company stated that the fresh funds will be directed towards offering loans to underserved small merchants and mom-and-pop store owners across the country. it claimed to have disbursed over 800 crore rupees (US$109.6 million) to its merchants since it was founded in 2018, with its point of sales business growing to US$2 billion in annualized transaction value within three months of its launch.

Currently, BharatPe serves over 50 Lakh merchants across more than 50 cities. The company also works with six NBFC partners at present and is looking to scale this up to 20 lending partners, as it looks to add new channel financing products to its offering to merchants, this year. BharatPe claims to be one of the largest B2B fintech lenders in the country, disbursing Rs 200 crore to its merchant partners every month. The company said that it grew 30x in 2019, with over 60 million UPI transactions each month, and that it had processed annualized transactions worth US$7 billion that same year. Additionally, the company has set a target of disbursing Rs 1,000 crore of loans in FY21 and $2 billion in loans by March 2023.

“BharatPe is committed to empowering the small merchants and kirana store owners with easy to use and secure fintech products. The fact that we have been able to raise debt from all three renowned venture debt providers — Alteria, Innoven and Trifecta Capital — in the largest single raise is a testimony of the scalability of our business model,” said Ashneer Grover, Co-founder and CEO, BharatPe.

BharatPe’s aim is to be the utility app for more than 10 million offline merchants in India for all their business needs. Apart from focusing on its QR-code solutions, BharatPe is also diversifying into the prepaid card segment. It has also launched its own PoS offering, BharatSwipe, which will allow merchants to accept card payments. Within two years, the company has successfully emerged as one of the top UPI payment processors in the country, a space which has the likes of well-funded firms including Walmart-backed PhonePe, Paytm as well as Google and Facebook-owned WhatsApp, competing for market share. Its international competitors include Lunar, Mamo Pay, eXPO and Wingocard.