Salesforce Ventures makes strategic investment in Indian startup Razorpay

Fintech unicorn Razorpay has received a strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of the US-based maker of cloud-based customer-relations software. The undisclosed investment would further strengthen Bengaluru-based Razorpya’s presence in the business banking space.

Razorpay said this investment and partnership will make an impactful contribution to the industry and drive adoption and financial growth for underserved small businesses in the next twelve months.

“We are going through one of the largest transformations in the Indian financial industry, one that is significantly influencing the payments and banking experience now and for the years to come,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder, Razorpay. “At Razorpay, we want to make further strides on the idea of investing in India’s digital future and building an intelligent payment and banking infrastructure for the new-world.”

Mathur said this investment, along with support from the existing investors will help build an ecosystem for hassle-free, easy-to-integrate payments and banking experience. “We also hope to expand, build new products and deliver this experience to businesses in South East Asian countries too,” said Mathur.

The company had announced its Series E fundraise of $160 million in April, with which the company’s valuation tripled to $3 billion in less than six months, signalling one of the fastest increases in valuation for an Indian Unicorn. Over the last seven years, Razorpay has helped small businesses and large enterprises modernise their financial infrastructure. It is doing this by providing intelligent automated payment and business banking solutions to manage their money flow end-to-end. This new infusion of funds will accelerate this growth.

Salesforce Ventures is a leading investor in enterprise software and as one of the fastest-growing enterprise companies, has the insight and expertise to advise Razorpay on the next stage of its growth journey.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson and CEO, Salesforce India said the journey towards a 'less-cash' economy has been accelerated with the pandemic. She said rapid growth in digital payments over the last year has opened doors for technology innovation and Razorpay has been emerging as the company of choice for a lot of e-commerce businesses.

“We are excited to support Razorpay in their journey to revolutionise digital finance not only in India, but globally as well,” said Bhattacharya.

In the last six months, Razorpay has witnessed a 40-45 per cent growth, month-on-month. Currently, the company has achieved $50 billion TPV (Total Payment Volume). It aims to further solidify its position as one of the largest full-stack fintech companies in the country. Razorpay’s business-banking platform, RazorpayX is changing the business of banking rapidly and intelligently. The platform saw over 400 per cent growth in transaction volume during these 16 months of pandemic and is currently serving over 15,000 Indian businesses.

Razorpay said its experience in building innovation for a market as diverse as India, can solve a range of Fintech challenges in the Southeast Asia markets. The company believes that the payment problem is more dominant in developing countries than developed countries.

The firm is powering payments for over 8 million businesses currently, including the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Tata Technologies, Zomato and Swiggy. It is set to reach 200 million customers (from the current 140 million) by the end of this year.