[Funding Alert] BharatPe raises one of the largest venture debts of Rs 139 Cr

Fintech startup BharatPe has raised Rs 90 crore of venture debt by Alteria Capital and Rs 49 crore from ICICI bank. It has raised a total of Rs 139 crore of debt capital in this round . This will be one of the largest debt cheques for an Indian startup till date. The funding is a part of a larger debt of Rs 250 crore the startup is raising.

Speaking on the investment from Alteria, Suhail Sameer, Group President, BhartatPe said in a press statement, “As BharatPe builds towards meeting the small merchants credit needs at scale, raising institutional debt is critical for us. We intend to raise close to $700 million of debt capital over the next two years. We are glad that renowned venture debt fund Alteria Capital has decided to partner with us to enable this. Alteria team has been very supportive of our vision, and we look forward to building a long term win-win relationship with them.“

The startup was founded in 2018 by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani with the vision to make financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants. BharatPe had launched India's first UPI interoperable QR code, and first UPI payment backed merchant cash advance service.

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The statement by Alteria Capital added in 2020, post-COVID-19, BharatPe also launched India’s only ZERO MDR card acceptance terminals – BharatSwipe.

“We are excited to lead this debt round for BharatPe which is also a sign of the maturity of the Indian ecosystem where mature startups can construct debt rounds on the strength of their balance sheet as well as business traction. BharatPe has shown sharp growth and we believe the ability to leverage their extensive small merchant network to funnel credit is going to play out well in this decade.” said Vinod Murali, Managing Partner, Alteria Capital. 

Currently serving over 50 lakh merchants across 65+ cities, the startup is a leader in UPI offline transactions, having processed 6 crore+ UPI transactions a month (annualised Transaction value of $7+ billion). The statement added that BharatPe has already facilitated disbursement of over Rs 800 crore to its merchants since its launch.

BharatPe’s POS business grew to $2 billion annualised transaction value in just three months post the launch. BharatPe has raised $142.5 million till date. The company’s list of marquee investors includes Beenext, Sequoia Capital India, SteadView Capital, Ribbit Capital, Coatue Management LLC, Insight Partners, and Amplo.

Alteria has recently secured SEBI approvals for its second venture debt fund with a target corpus of Rs, 1000 crore along with a greenshoe of Rs 750 crore. Alteria Capital is currently investing from its Fund I which has a corpus of Rs 962 crore and has backed companies like Rebel Foods, Lendingkart, ZestMoney, Dunzo, Portea, Toppr, Spinny, Stanza Living, Vogo Automotive, Melorra, mfine, Generico, Loadshare, LBB, Maverix, Country Delight, Clover, Happay, CropIn, Cityflo, Onco.com, Nua, DaMENSCH, Faces Cosmetics, and Universal Sportsbiz.