UK-based Revolut's India arm acquires Arvog Forex in first acquisition in the country

Revolut entered the Indian market in April 2021.

Revolut India, the Indian registered entity of London-headquartered fintech player Revolut, has acquired international money transfers company Arvog Forex to kick-start its product strategy in the country.

While Revolut India did not reveal the acquisition amount, a source aware of the deal said the acquisition was worth around $4.5 million.

The Mumbai-based forex firm will help Revolut secure a forex license and began offering remittance and forex services to Indian customers.

The company entered the Indian market in April 2021 to make most of the deepening of digital financial services in the country and plans to compete with the likes of banks to new-age fintechs.

In an interview with Moneycontrol, Revolut India's CEO Paroma Chatterjee had said that the company plans to bring its products in the market by the second half of 2022 starting with payments by offering cross-border remittances, followed by trading and investments and lending.

On the acquisition, Chatterjee said, "This is the first step towards our aspiration to be a significant part of the digital financial revolution in India. Our significant investment plans, this acquisition and the quality of the team we are putting together reflect our intention to rapidly roll out these innovative products and services."

Eventually, Revolut has plans to offer its gamut of services and will function as a full-fledged digital bank in India.

For the Indian market, the company has committed an initial investment of a little over $45 million (approx Rs 340 crore) and will be hiring up to 300 employees by the end of this year.

"India is a key region in our global expansion plan and this acquisition is testament to the rapid strides we want to make here. It is an incredible time to be a fintech company in India and we plan to make the best of this opportunity," she added.

Besides the products, the company has already started work on building a product and engineering hub in India, which will be the first outside of the UK. The hub will also be serving the company's markets around India, mainly in South East Asia.

Revolut plans to have a super app in India to provide all financial services under one roof and currently has a waitlist of 30,000 Indians wanting to join the app.

Unlike neobanking startups in the country that provide the technology layer for banks and NBFCs, Revolut will be building its own banking products and lending from its own books, Chatterjee had said.

Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut provides a wide range of financial services globally including payments, transfers, investment and trading, payment gateways for businesses, digital banking, debit cards, among others.

Revolut has been expanding beyond the United Kingdom and the United States markets and secured an $800-million funding led by Tiger Global and SoftBank in July last year, which valued the startup at $33 billion.

The startup has more than 18 million customers globally and records over 150 million transactions a month.