Ezetap, a Bangalore based mobile point-of-sale payments startup which currently has branches in 7 major cities in India, has announced a fresh ₹150 crore investment round comprising of existing investors The Social+Capital Partnership, Helion Advisors, Berggruen Holdings and new band of investors which includes Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm for Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing and Capricorn Investment Group.
The company, founded by Abhijit Bose and Bhaktha Keshavachar in the year 2011, started out with a vision to ‘usher in a new era of a frictionless payment ecosystem in India’, as the company likes to put it. It is a Square-like mobile point of sale solution providers that allows merchants to convert their mobile phones into point of sale terminals.
The company’s total funding adds up to a whopping $35 million until now, which includes previously raised $8 million from Helion, The Social+Capital Partnership and Berggruen Holdings in February last year and a strategic investment from American Express a month later. The company was initially incubated by popular early stage investment fund AngelPrime.
Following the latest funding, Social+Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya has become the chairman of Ezetap’s board.
The service has received a lot of positive outlooks from the likes of leading companies in India which include Bajaj Allianz, Castrol and Micro Pension, to name a few.
In essence, the firm enables merchants to turn their smartphones into a Smart Point of Sale. The solution uses a card reader connected to your smartphone which uses a mobile app and a platform which allows Ezetap to provide value-added service specially designed for you. This also enables merchants to integrate their existing system with just a few taps.
In an attempt to offer an integrated payments and loyalty solutions for merchants across the country, Ezetap acquired Hyderabad based Clinknow in June last year. The company had also been selected by State Bank of India (SBI) to deploy 500,000 PoS terminals over the next five years. It had also partnered Citibank to launch a mobile payment solution that will allow the firm to provide services to credit/debit card holdersto launch a mobile payment solution that will enable credit and debit card holders in India to make payments at the point of payment in January last year.
The company’s claims include deployment of over 60,000 new points of sale across India in its under 30 months service, managing process transactions worth over $1 million on a daily basis and activation of over 500 new small retail merchants on a weekly basis. The fresh funds, the company says, will play a central role in increasing its small merchant base in the next few months.
