Payment gateway Razorpay has become the latest fintech unicorn by raising $100 million in its latest funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and current investor Sequoia India. It is now a part of the exclusive club of start-ups valued at more than a billion dollars.
Existing investors Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, Y Combinator and Matrix Partners also took part in the Series D round. It raised $206.5 million since its inception in 2014, including $75 million in the previous round of fundraising in the previous year.
Razorpay is now the fifth Indian fintech firm to bag the ‘unicorn’ status after online payment gateway BillDesk, Flipkart-owned PhonePe and insurtech startup PolicyBazaar, which were all valued at over $1 billion during 2018.
Paytm became a part of the Unicorn league in 2014 and termed the most valuable startup in the country at $16 billion.
Bengaluru-based Razorpay has around 1,300 employees. The company is planning to use these funds for launching products on its neo-banking business Razorpay X and lending business Razorpay Capital, aiming to multiply their growth in the coming year.
It will also be recruiting 500 people across functions of growth, product and technology.
“GIC is a good long-term investor to have. Their knowledge about public markets and investment in firms like Bajaj Finserv Ltd and Bandhan Bank Ltd will help us in our journey to go public. With this fundraise, we will focus on going deeper into the Indian market and broaden our product portfolio to grow our business and achieve profitability,” said Harshil Mathur, chief executive and co-founder of Razorpay.
“It is too early to speak on which startups we are looking to acquire since these are still in the discussion phase. But we continue to look at inorganic avenues of growth through opportunistic acquisitions,” said Mathur.
The six-year-old start-up offer payments and other financial infrastructure to assist businesses to manage money flow.
