Banking solutions and digital payments processor Cashfree has appointed Harsh Gupta, former senior vice president at Razorpay, as its new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) as part of its larger plan to bolster growth, two people familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol.
As part of incoming changes, some reshuffle is also expected at the C-suite level.
Arun Tikko, the current Chief Business Officer (CBO) could be transitioned to lead the expansion of International business vertical, while the Banking and Alliance lead Anshul Lal may leave, they said.
Cashfree, in a written statement, confirmed the new appointments.
One of the sourced cited above said that the company, once profitable, has been under pressure to scale up the business since the RBI’s embargo on onboarding new merchants in 2022, impacting the firm's topline.
In March 2024, Apis Partners-backed Cashfree reportedly raised a bridge round to the tune of Rs 130-150 crore from its existing investors. Further, the company is seeking to raise additional funds from external investors as well.
Cashfree denied to comment on the development.
The company had raised its last funding round in June 2021 from State Bank of India (SBI) at a post-money valuation of $200 million. The firm has raised over $44 million to date, data from Traxcn shows.
“The leadership changes are in sync with the aim to scale up and return to profitability. The management wants to run a tighter leadership ship from Bengaluru office. The last two years have not been well for payment aggregators due to changes in regulations,” one of the sources told.
A senior executive of a payments firm said Cashfree wants to tap into new segments like education and travel and double down its presence in e-commerce for payment business, which competitors like Razorpay and PayU have already managed to pace.
The numbers
In FY23, the online payments processor and aggregator’s losses jumped 46X to Rs 133 crore loss compared to Rs 3 crore in FY22, even as operating revenue jumped 75.43 percent to Rs 614 crore. The company has a merchant base of over 6 lakh.
Processing $5 billion worth of payments per month, Cashfree is aiming to return to profitability by the first quarter of FY25.
Compared to this, Peak XV Partners-backed Razorpay reported a consolidated revenue of Rs 2,279 crore, up nearly 53 percent year-on-year (YoY), mainly on account of a rise in enterprise and SME customers.
The net profits remained flat at Rs 7.3 crore for FY23, showed the company's Registrar of Company (RoC) filings.
On the other hand, PayU’s Indian entity, which recently received RBI’s final nod to restart onboarding new merchants, reported over 30 percent growth in its revenue to Rs 3,300 crore in FY23.
While the results for FY24 are awaited for all three firms, PayU’s revenue from core payments business rose 15 percent to almost Rs 1750 crore in the first half of the year (H1 FY24).
Back in August 2022, major Payment Aggregators (PAs), including PayU, Stripe, Razorpay, Paytm and Cashfree, were asked to pause onboarding of new online merchant clients until they can comply with a few guidelines, including systematic audit reports, required to obtain a final payment aggregator PA license.
A PA is a third-party service provider that enables users to make and businesses to accept payments online.
The temporary ban was eventually lifted in December last year for Razorpay, Stripe and Cashfree after a wait of almost a year. PayU received its approval in April 2024, while Paytm continues to wait.
The move came as a setback for companies as the number of PAs operators competing for a piece of the payment service offerings to large businesses continued to grow.
Founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta in 2015, Cashfree processes transactions worth $80 billion annually.
In FY24, the fintech firm introduced a host of new products for both cross selling and upsell opportunities, besides upgrading its current stack in a pay-per-use model.
This includes risk management solution for payment gateways RiskShield, a new platform for payment orchestration Flow Wise, solutions like no-code link KYC for verifications, embedded payments, BNPL plus, and escrow offering.
Besides India, their solutions are available in eight countries, including the USA, Canada and the UAE. The company holds a majority stake in UAE-based payments firm, Telr since 2021.
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