BharatPe eyes up to $4 billion valuation

BharatPe is in talks to raise a new round of funding that could value the fintech unicorn at nearly $3.8-4 billion, two people familiar with the development said.

Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd, which runs the BharatPe payments service, plans to raise at least $150 million in the Series F transaction, the people said, requesting anonymity.

The company is in early talks with several private equity and hedge funds, they added.

A spokesperson for BharatPe declined to comment on the development.

Founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018, the fintech firm operates UPI QR code-based payments app for small and medium businesses.

The company has also launched BharatSwipe, a payments acceptance terminal.

BharatPe is currently serving more than 7.5 million merchants in more than 140 cities and claims to process over 110 million UPI transactions per month, according to the company website.

In addition, since its launch, the company claims to have disbursed loans worth ₹2,800 crore to more than 300,000 merchants.

The fintech company has attracted private equity funding. In August, it became a unicorn, or a startup valued at more than a billion dollars, after it raised $370 million at a $2.85 billion valuation.

The company had also secured several rounds of debt financing. The latest such infusion was in October when it raised ₹100 crore in debt from non-banking financial company MAS Financial Services Pvt. Ltd.

In the same month, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a small finance bank (SFB) licence to the consortium of Centrum Financial Services Ltd (Centrum), the small business lending arm of the Centrum Group, and BharatPe.

That month, Flipkart-owned PhonePe sued BharatPe over the use of the ‘Pe’ suffix for the latter’s newly launched ‘buy now pay later’ product, ‘PostPe’.

Startups in India’s fintech segment have drawn significant investments in the past few months. Uni, a credit and payments firm, raised $70 million as a part of its Series A round led by General Catalyst in December.

Last month, JusPay Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates a payments technology platform, raised $60 million in its Series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

In November, Slice, a fintech startup focused on millennials and operated by GaragePrenuers Internet Pvt. Ltd, turned unicorn. It raised $220 million as part of its latest Series B fundraise led by New York-based investment firms Tiger Global and Insight Partners.