This year has been full of highlights and milestones for the startup sector in India, whether it is spectacular IPOs, the number of unicorns, or the amount of capital raised from investors. The fintech and edtech sectors have received the greatest slice of the pie, and even as the new year is around the corner, they keep on conquering new heights.
This time, it is fintech major Razorpay, which became the most valued private-held fintech startup and the second-most valued fintech startup (after Paytm) in the world’s second-largest internet market. The feat came in after it raised $375 million in fresh funding.
The funding, a part of its Series F funding round co-led by hedge and private equity firms Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital, and TCV and included participation from existing investors like Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, GIC, and Y Combinator, puts Razorpay’s valuation at $7.5 billion, a jump of over seven times in the last 15 months and the fastest increase in valuation for an Indian unicorn in a year. It became a unicorn in October 2020 and was valued at $3 billion in April 2021. The startup has raised a total of $741.5 million in funding to date.
The proceeds from the funding round will be utilized towards scaling up its Business Banking Suite, RazorpayX, and create and scale full-stack financial services offerings next year for businesses to focus less on handling compliance and operations, as well as invest in new acquisitions in the SaaS business-to-business (B2B) software segment next year, clock overseas growth (the South-East Asian countries in the beginning), and hire over 00 employees to fuel its domestic and international growth. It also plans to become a full-stack financial solutions company, help small businesses, and leverage its leadership in building intelligent payment products in the South-East Asian markets.
Founded by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, the seven-year-old Razorpay made its first venture into the realm of financial services with its neo-banking and lending solutions, Razorpay X and Razorpay Capital three years ago.
Since then it has grown rapidly and even evolved into a unicorn last year. The startup is known to allow businesses to accept, process, and disburse payments with its product suite, giving users access to multiple payment modes (including credit and debit cards, net banking, UPI, JioMoney, Mobikwik, Airtel Money, and others). It also helps businesses make automated tax payments, generate payment links that can be shared via email or through instant messaging services, provides automatic reconciliation of incoming transactions using virtual accounts and UPI IDs, and provides shoppers with a faster checkout option.
Razorpay has had a strong 2021, clocking 300% year-over-year growth for the second year on a row and processing $60 billion in transactions annually (it plans to increase that amount to $90 billion by the end of next year). It claims to have reputed names such as Facebook, Swiggy, CRED, National Pension System, Indian Oil among its customers, and 34 out of the 42 newly minted Indian unicorns this year using Razorpay.
