[Funding alert] Easebuzz raises $4M in Series A round from 8i Ventures, Varanium Capital, and Guild Capital

Easebuzz, a B2B-focused, API-driven full-stack payments solution provider, has raised $4 million in a Series A round led by 8i Ventures, Varanium Capital, and Guild Capital. Former Citrus Pay founders Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta also participated as angel investors in this round.

This is Easebuzz’s first funding round and Vertices Partners was the legal advisor to the company.

The startup plans to use this fresh round of funding to strengthen the product team, enhance sales and marketing efforts, and offer more payment APIs and solutions for small and mid-size enterprises.

Rohit Prasad, MD, Easebuzz, said, “The current funding round will help us accelerate our mission of powering digital collections and payments for every retail business in India.”

According to Rohit, its product DNA designed around removing friction from every collection touchpoint of payments has made it the preferred partner for MSME businesses.

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Massive market opportunity

Easebuzz claimed that it had achieved 12X growth, both in revenues and gross transaction value, and currently processes nearly $3 billion of transactions a year. The company expects to hit a $10 billion annual run rate in the coming year.

Incubated by Symbiosis centre for entrepreneurship and innovation in 2017, this bootstrapped venture has been profitable since inception. Easebuzz was part of JioGenNext’s Scale cohort in fintech in 2019 and benefited from advice and support for their GTM strategy as well as fund raise.

“India’s $800 billion retail economy is going hyper-digital and Easebuzz is the best-positioned payments player to take advantage of this massive market opportunity,” said Vikram Chachra, Founding Partner, 8i Ventures.

According to research report by RedSeer Consulting, the payment gateway aggregator market in India is expected to grow from current Rs 9.5 trillion to about Rs 22.6 trillion in transactions worth by FY25.

Apoorv Gautam, India Head and COO of Guild Capital, said “Growing digitisation of merchants, driven by lockdowns and government policies favouring financial inclusion, have triggered an inflection point for the digital payment ecosystem in India.”

Easebuzz is also planning to scale across different cities of the country and will enable new services on its platform to help businesses scale on digital remittances and collections.