startups

Visa, others invest in PayMate’s $25 million round – Livemint


Mumbai: Business payments start-up PayMate has raised funds from international card payments giant Visa Inc., among others, as part of its Series D funding round, to accelerate growth and expand its business overseas, said Ajay Adiseshann, founder and CEO, PayMate.

As part of its ongoing $25 million round, the new investors joining in include Visa, Recruit Strategic Partners, the venture capital arm of Japanese human resources firm Recruit Holdings, and Brand Capital, the investment arm of media conglomerate Times Group. Existing investor Mayfair 101, an Australian corporate advisory firm also participated in the round.

“We have raised a significant portion of the $25 million, and plan to finish the fundraise in the next 60 days,” said Adiseshann in a telephonic interview.

PayMate’s cloud-based platform enables enterprise and small and medium businesses to automate and digitize their entire procurement-to-payment cycle, including vendor management, vendor payments, invoicing, and supply chain financing options.

It originally started as a consumer-facing mobile payments platform before the app payments wave took off in India. Between 2011 and 2013, it gradually pivoted towards targeting businesses, away from consumers, since “enterprises are more reliable, have longer sales cycles, and we found more use cases for businesses,” said Adiseshann.

Visa’s investment also follows its tie-up with PayMate, which helped the start-up expand in India last year, and in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Europe this year. Last year, Visa acquired a minority stake in Payments gateway BillDesk, at a valuation of $1.8 billion.

T R Ramachandran, Visa’s Group Country Manager, India and South Asia said, “There is an opportunity to bring efficiencies into the B2B payments supply chain via richer data and automated processes”

“We believe it is critical to partner with local players who are bringing innovation to our global payments network, and our investment in PayMate reflects that,” he added.

PayMate claims its revenue has jumped 400% over the past year, but did not disclose details. It recorded $5 billion in processing volumes for FY19 and is eyeing $7-10 billion processing volume next fiscal, Adiseshann said.

Its new investors also come with investing experience in India. Japan’s Recruit has backed a number of Indian start-ups including

E-commerce firm Snapdeal, software firms Locus, Fyle and CleverTap, and banking start-up Open Financial Technologies.

PayMate also counts venture capital fund Lightbox Ventures as a major investor and early backer, although Lightbox did not participate in the current round.

Business-to-business payment startups in the country continue to draw investor interest, with a few startups such as Razorpay, MSwipe and Pine Labs able to raise capital from marquee investors. Razorpay raised $75 million led by Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital, while Pine Labs is closing a $75 million round from existing investors including Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek and PayPal, Mint reported on 15 February.



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