Indian startup Razorpay hit unicorn status after raising $100 million in a Series D funding round, the company said in a statement on Monday (Oct. 12).
The investment was co-led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and Sequoia Capital India. Existing investors Y Combinator, Matrix Partners India, Tiger Global and Ribbit Capital also participated in the round. The funding will be used to expand the company’s workforce and to enhance its neobanking platform Razorpay and its lending arm Razorpay Capital.
The new funding gives Razorpay $206.5 million in investments since its inception in 2014. Its most recent fundraise includes $75 million in a 2019 Series C round.
Razorpay was launched by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur and was born out of a crowd-funding project. The startup received a lot of attention after being chosen for the Y Combinator accelerator program.
“Five years ago, when Harshil and I moved to Bangalore to start Razorpay, the startup ecosystem was still nascent and less than a decade old,” said Co-Founder Kumar. “For most businesses, accepting online payments was a major struggle and it was a stumbling block in India’s digitization drive.”
He added that they launched Razorpay to help all businesses accept digital payments. “Our commitment lives on — understanding the problems our customers face and building solutions through what we know best — technology.”
“We at Razorpay have always been a payments company, and our focus has always been financial solutions. With this funding we want to go further in our reach. We aim to build deeper tech products and solutions, as we always have done,” Co-Founder and Chief Executive Mathur told TechCrunch.
He added that the company is now focused on building out its neo-banking platform and the lending arm. “Neobanking is witnessing a 100 percent growth. We believe both will contribute towards a significant part of our revenue in FY21.”
The company’s new cash advance solution allows small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to borrow working capital within seconds. India has over 63 million SMBs, and about 60 percent of them lack easy access to loans.
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