The Indian banking and payments technology startup, Cashfree, has raised $35.3 million in a Series B funding round. The company plans on using the funds for research and development to further expand its offerings.
The latest funding round was led by the London-based private equity firm Apis Partners and also saw participation from Y Combinator and Smilegate who are Cashfree’s existing investors.
The Bengaluru-based startup was founded in 2015 by Reeju Dutta and Akash Sinha. The startup originally started as a payments gateway. After noticing difficulties in using online banking portals for disbursing payments everyday, the founders began working on a different solution. In mid-2016, Cashfree began working on a bulk Payouts solution for Indian businesses.
The banking and payments technology startup now helps 50,000+ businesses send and receive money through a host of online payment services. The products and services the company currently offers include a payment gateway with UPI support and Amazon Pay integration, a subscriptions payment solution which allows businesses to receive payment on a subscription basis, a product called Payouts for simplifying large-scale disbursement for businesses, and many more.
Some of the startup’s high-profile customers include Zomato, Dunzo, Delhivery, Xiaomi, Zoomcar, and BigBasket. According to the founder and CEO Akash Sinha’s statements to TechCrunch, Cashfree has remained profitable for the past three years. After the completion of the latest Series B funding round, the total funding the company has received since its inception has exceeded $42 million.
With the push towards digitization, payment services worldwide have undergone several major changes over the past few years, with digital payments starting to replace physical currency. India has also seen a major push towards digital payments, especially after the introduction of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) in 2016.
Cashfree is among many other startups in India which are competing in the online payments technology domain. The company’s growth started its trajectory when it was accepted by Y Combinator, an American seed money startup accelerator firm, which financed Cashfree’s seed round.
With the funds from the latest Series B financing round, Cashfree now plans to invest into research and development, in order to expand its current offerings and explore new territories in the emerging online payments market. The company also plans on expanding its operations by developing a cross-border payments solution to explore new opportunities outside of India.
