Soonicorn BharatPe raises Rs 50 crore in debt funding from Northern Arc Capital

Financial technology firm BharatPe has raised Rs 50 crore in a debt funding round from non-banking finance firm Northern Arc Capital, just a few months after closing a multi-million dollar round from leading venture capital firms.

This is the sixth round of debt financing for BharatPe in 2021. In January this year, the company had raised Rs 200 crore from three debt companies -- Alteria Capital, InnoVen Capital and Trifecta Capital. It later raised additional capital from ICICI Bank and Axis Bank.

"We have considerably ramped up our lending business in the last year and have set an ambitious target of facilitating disbursals to the tune of $1 billion to 10 lacs+ merchants by the end of current fiscal (FY22). We are excited about our latest capital raise from Northern Arc and are confident that, together, we will be able to transform Bharat and serve the needs of the underserved businesses in India. As we aggressively build this vertical and roll out products in the secured lending space, we will continue to partner with institutional debt providers to help empower millions of small merchants in India," said Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe.

BharatPe's last institutional round of funding happened in February which valued the company at $900 million. It was a $108 million round which constituted $90 million of primary and $18 million of secondary fundraising. The round was led by the company's existing investor Coatue Management. All seven existing institutional investors Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo and Sequoia Capital participated in the round.

With this investment, BharatPe has raised close to $300 million in equity and debt to date.

It claims to have facilitated the disbursement of loans totalling over Rs 1,600 crore to its merchants since its launch in 2018. Its POS business processes payments of over Rs 1,200 crore per month.

The company has over 60 lakh merchants across 100 cities and it claims to be processing over 10 crores UPI transactions per month with an annualised transaction processed value of $10 billion.