Fintech startupBharatPe recently announced that it has raised $75mn in Series C funding round led by hedge fund Coatue Management and Palo Alto-based fintech investor Ribbit Capital. The latest funding rose BharatPe’s valuation to $425mn.
Existing investor Steadview Capital and Insight Partners also participated in the funding round along with new investor Amplo, a US-based VC firm. So far, BharatPe has received a total of $143mn in investment from four funding rounds.
The firm said that the reason for this latest fundraising was to invest around $70 million in equity capital in its NBFC arm Resilient Capital, and leverage that by 3-4 times to raise a pool of around $300 million to service loans for merchants on its platform. The company also plans to use NBFC to offer lines of credit to its base of small merchants.
Talking about future endeavors, Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and CEO of BharatPe said, “We have already disbursed Rs 100 crore of term loans to merchants through partner NBFCs and are ready to extend lines of credit to our merchants, for which we need our own NBFC to innovate. We applied for the license in August last year and we’re hoping we’ll get the license from the RBI by March.”
The company added that apart from the $70 million that will be deployed in the NBFC arm, BharatPe plans to use the remainder to build technology and new products.
In recent times, a lot of fintech startups in India like OkCredit and Khatabook have applied for NBFC licenses as they look at lending small businesses as a viable business model. UPI payments processors are also looking at lending as a business after the government recently reduced Merchant Discount Rates on small payments to zero.
