Merchant payments solutions provider BharatPe has raised a fresh $370 million in funding led by new investor Tiger Global at a valuation of $2.85 billion, becoming the latest Indian start-up to become a unicorn.
It is the 19th Indian start-up to join the ranks of unicorns this year.
The fundraise, part of the company’s Series E financial round, includes a mix of primary and secondary investment.
The primary component of the round is about $350 million and the secondary amounts to $20 million.
All employees holding vested ESOPs (employee stock options) have been given full liquidity in the secondary, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The round also saw Dragoneer Investment Group and Steadfast Capital joining the firm’s captable.
Existing backers Coatue Management, Insight Partners, Sequoia Growth, Ribbit Capital and Amplo also backed the investment round.
BharatPe had last raised about $108 million in primary and secondary equity funding from a clutch of investors in February at a valuation of about $900 million.
The fintech start-up has so far raised some $600 million in equity and debt financing.
The firm announced the elevation of Ashneer Grover to the position of the co-founder and MD while Suhail Sameer has been appointed the CEO. Sameer used to be the company’s group president until now.
In a statement, Grover said the firm has $0.5-billion cash on books and is well-capitalised.
“BharatPe will remain maniacally focused on lending as the core business and small merchants as our primary target segment,” Grover said.
Co-founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018, the start-up currently serves over 70 lakh merchants across more than 140 cities.
The firm that claims to process over 11 crore UPI transactions per month said it has already facilitated disbursement of loans totaling to over Rs 1,800 crore to its merchants since launch.
BharatPe’s POS business processes payments of over Rs 1,400 crore per month.
In June this year, the company announced the acquisition of PAYBACK India, a multi-brand loyalty programme company with over 100 million members.
It was also given an in-principle approval by the Reserve Bank of India to establish a Small Finance Bank in partnership with Centrum Financial Services (Centrum), the established and profitable NBFC arm of the Centrum Group.
