Naspers backed PayU is in the final stages to acquire payment processing startup Citrus Pay, reports ETTech. As per the report, the startup has been offered around $150 – $180 million for the acquisition.
The deal is expected to be an all-cash deal. If this deal happens, it could be India’s largest deal in the finance technology sector. The report further says, based on the people aware of the matter, that the deal is expected to close in a month or two.
After acquisition, the entities will be combined, and is expected to emerge as the leader in the online commerce space in terms of market share. Both the companies are focusing on providing payment solutions to merchants who operate online.
Once the deal is done, Citrus Pay’s existing investors will exit from the company, including Sequoia Capital, Ascent Capital and Japanese strategic investors Beenos and Econtext Asia. Sequoia holds about 32% of the five year-old company, while other investors own about 25%.
Naspers is expected to invest around $30-40 million into the company, after the acquisition. Both Jitendra Gupta and Amrish Rau will be part of the PayU management. Along with that, all 300 employees of the startup are also expected to be retained.
So far, in this space, the biggest acquisition deal is the acquisition of online recharge platform FreeCharge by online retailer Snapdeal. Since the acquisition of FreeCharge, it has evolved from a recharge platform to a payment platform.
Citrus Pay was founded in 2013 as a payment solutions provider offering its services through three business verticals — payment processing, enterprise payment SaaS solutions and consumer payment services. It also provides services such as management and payment of monthly bills, tracking of expenses to its consumers.
The payment processing startup has raised more than $32 million in three funding rounds. Most recently, it raised a $25 million Series C round of funding from Sequoia Capital, eContext Asia, Beenos Asia and Ascent Capital.
Last year, the startup had tied-up with RuPay and Visa in order to deepen its presence within payment space. A couple of weeks ago, it also hired PayPal’s Abhishek Ayyagari to head product development.
