We are ‘resilient’ in every sense, plan to take BharatPe public in next 18-24 months: CEO

FY24 was good. 2025 should be far better. We became Ebitda profitable for the first time in October last year (Q3FY25). It was a landmark year for us. Since then, we've been working harder to increase our revenue and improve our cost efficiency. We're on track to achieve full-year Ebitda profitability in 2025.

What have we done right? You have to see the context—at just over six years old as a company, there's a lot to do. We focused on revenue levers wherever possible and worked on cost efficiency by re-engineering processes to eliminate or streamline activities.

We assessed each aspect of the business—does it generate revenue, add value, or is it just a cost centre? Do we really need it? Lastly, we optimised credit loss, ensuring risk and reward matched. We realised we could operate at a much lower level and made the shift

How did that impact your (loan) disbursal?

We actually increased disbursals while reducing credit loss, which gave us a double benefit—lower costs and higher revenue. We don’t put in too much investment in new business. We take a measured approach: building a prototype, refining it, and launching when it is market-ready. It takes time, but it ensures quick monetisation.

We've had some failures, but our successes outweigh them, which is why we've achieved so much in just six years. What often gets overlooked is the work we've done on building the right management team and board. We're now a litigation-free company with all legacy issues resolved. We've also made significant investments in governance and technology.

What is the status for unsecured lending?

Unsecured loan is very small at this point in time. We have just taken baby steps towards secured lending with two new partnerships. We would like to increase that further. But it takes time to build, and won’t happen overnight.

So most of your disbursements are towards the personal segment or its business loan side?

I will say it's been mixed. The loans that we facilitate via our partners get classified as personal loans and in some cases business loans. These loans are underwritten basis the cash flows of merchants’. So basically you are underwriting their business for underwriting their livelihood.

Unlike personal loans which you apply from any app, where underwriting relies on static documents like income statements, we focus on performance over time, using cash flows as the key metric.

What is BharatPe's current exposure to Trillion Loans, and what percentage of your overall loan disbursements comes from their books versus your partners?

It all depends on the capital availability at partners and Trillion. The overarching is the credit loss rate and the demand and supply available. Since we're working with so many partners, we have to ensure that everyone gets their fair share.

Trillion at this point in time, maybe, doing something 25-30 percent of our overall loan disbursement.

Will this percentage increase or decrease?

It will remain constant while our disbursals would go up because we intend to add more partners.

Do you see increasing stake in Trillion Loans in future?

Yes, we've already increased from 51 percent to 61 percent as we speak.

On the consumer payment side, not much has happened at BharatPe while your peers compete with UPI market share. Is it not on Bharatpe priority or you want to keep your focus intact towards merchant business.  

We launched our consumer app only in August last year. For 5.5 years of our existence, we didn't have anything on consumer payment side. We are progressing well without any campaigns. We now plan to do some after a period of stabilisation.

The consumer app space is crowded, and it’s not easy to wean users away from established platforms. We don't want to just go and spend money in the market to get some people. We’re not chasing large market share. Instead, we aim to provide a great user experience, drive more transactions, and monetise effectively. For us, even a single-digit market share on the consumer side (UPI) would translate to significant numbers.

So, say five years down the line, BharatPe would have a mix of both merchant and consumer business…

We started with merchant focus and we will keep that. Five years down the line, I would like both the businesses to flourish and become bigger, and probably integrate. We're not trying to build two independent businesses, but trying to integrate them.

You build this UPI app with Unity SFB. Are there other products in the pipeline? What is the synergy with Unity as of now?

We built our Third Party Application Provider (TPAP) stack with Unity. We built another stack earlier, pay-in and pay-out stack, or the UPI and the QR code that we put for merchants. We are trying to get more enterprise clients for the TPAP stack. There are few things that we working on  with Unity and are a few months away.

How is the revenue percentage divided between lending and devices?

The difference in revenue is not much. They're almost equal. We gain subscription revenue, i.e. rental, and a transaction fee on devices. Credit on UPI is also growing.

Do you plan to restart P2P product 12 percent club? 

We ran P2P with a partner and we were a facilitator. When the deadlines came in August (new regulation), it didn’t seem like a business we can do any further.

What is the status of the new investment app—Invest Bharat?

Right now we have digital gold and FD. We are working on mutual funds and insurance.

So you are looking at a full-fledged wealth management app?

I would just keep it to ‘Invest’ at this point of time. Wealth management has a connotation of advisory etc. and we are not into it at this point of time, but wouldn't want to rule out.

Any plans to raise capital, both at Trillion Loans and BharatPe entity?

We've have recently infused equity in Trillion (share increased from 51 percent to 61 percent) and it has its own debt program. We've been raising institutional debt from large NBFCs and banks. We're undergoing a rating process for Trillion, which will allow us to expand debt further.

As the parent company, we'll infuse equity into it whenever required.

For BharatPe, we're financially strong, good with liquidity and Ebitda positive, as I mentioned earlier. The next milestone for us would be an IPO, and it is something that we are seriously debating and internalising. In the next 18-24 months, depending on the market condition, we would like to go for it (IPO).

If an investor wants to join us during this process, we're open to it, but we are not specifically going out into the market. We'll work towards the IPO.

Have you engaged with bankers yet? Or it's still preliminary internal talks?

No banker appointed yet. But it is something we would like to do now.

You've had quite a journey since joining BharatPe—starting as interim CEO, becoming the full-time CEO, and navigating through significant challenges, including legal disputes, regulatory shifts in areas like unsecured lending and P2P, and leadership transitions…

It’s been interesting, challenging and very fulfilling. I must say in my entire career, the last 2.5 years, really (has been) the peak of everything. I can’t take the credit; it would be unfair. I have had wonderful set of people around, the management team, the board, investors and employees. No individual can do it alone and there has to be like-minded people, and I've been fortunate.

Challenges comes in everyone's career and business. We've also had our own set of it. But we've been focused. Very different from what I used to do earlier, but it's definitely very fulfilling and exciting and all credit to the team. People have been patient.

BharatPe’s boardroom saga has takeaways for the entire startup ecosystem

Do you think BharatPe became overshadowed by legal battles rather than a serious business? Does that bother you personally? 

There will be time when people will talk about what BharatPe did. It's a real case study on how we navigated so many challenges at such an early stage of our existence. And I think someone wisely chose a name resilient.

I am also a human being. Everything affected me. But all along I have been saying this--I'm focused on business and so is the rest of the team. The legal case is something that is handled externally. We couldn't have achieved Ebitda profitability if we were perusing a particular agenda.