BharatPe surpasses Ashneer Grover episode, registers record growth.
Highlight
- Fintech startup BharatPe has registered record growth in the financial year ended March 31
- Stock exchanges are on their way to break even and list in the next 18-24 months, said CEO Suhail Sameer
- Priority is to firm employees so that they stay focused and teams remain stable: BharatPe CEO
Putting aside the controversy over its co-founder Ashneer Grover, fintech startup BharatPe has registered record growth in the financial year ended March 31 and is on track to break even and list on stock exchanges in the next 18-24 months, with its CEO Suhail Sameer said.
In an interview with news agency PTI, he said the board will consider what to do with the money allegedly laundered by Grover, adding that his priority is the firm’s employees so that they remain focused and the teams stable.
“The second focus is on continuing to fire on the business front. From a long-term perspective, that’s what matters to me, my teams. I’m doubling down on these things,” he said.
And that focus has paid off.
“In the last quarter (January-March) business is up 20 per cent on every metric – transactions, TPV, credit facilities, and revenue. And this is despite January (affected by Covid) and everything was a bit slow. Delhi shutdown There was a weekend curfew in many cities,” he said.
Read also: BharatPe removes Ashneer Grover from all posts for misuse of company funds
BharatPe, which allows shop owners to make digital payments through QR codes, is now in 225 cities (an increase of 2 times from last fiscal) and covers over 8 million merchants (5 million in FY21). above which ended on 31st March, 2021).
“Transaction value (TPV) has grown by 2.5 times year-on-year to USD 16 billion in 2021-22 (April 2021 to March 2022). The POS (point of sale) turnover is also 1x higher than last year .
25 lakh POS machines installed. We do USD 4 billion transactions on it till March,” he said.
The number of traders taking loans has increased from 1.6 lakh a year ago to 3 lakh.
“How much loan facility – exactly 3x. We provided loan facility of USD 650 million last year (FY22),” he said.
Postpay, the buy-now-pay-later product that the company launched five months ago, is doing one million transactions a month and a TPV of USD 50 million a month.
“Overall, from the company’s point of view, revenue has grown almost four times year on year. And we will exit at USD 110 million annually as compared to USD 31-32 million (previous year),” he added.
“From USD 6 million, we have grown to USD 110 million in 18-20 months.”
In the current fiscal, BharatPe is seeing an 85 per cent jump in TVPs to reach USD 30 billion, which will facilitate loans of up to USD 2 billion.
“Last 2-3 years were like network expansion, next 2-3 years we will continue to grow the network but doubling on lending. Postpay will be increased 4 times – from USD 50 million TPV to 200 million TPV a huge Sounds like numbers (but) I believe we’ll get there.”
The current fiscal year sees revenues growing to USD 300 million, and the merchant base growing to 12 million.
“Currently, we provide loan facilities of around Rs 800 crore per month. We want to take this to Rs 2,050 crore per month by March 2023,” he said.
BharatPe is looking to expand to 300 cities by the end of FY 2013 and take its gold loan offering to 20 cities by the end of 2022.
BharatPe stripped Grover of all titles and positions last month after a third-party audit reportedly ended the grim regime under him. But that hasn’t stopped the tussle between him and the company management, including the CEO.
Sameer said the board would decide what to do with the audit report received.
“I’m focused on business.”
He further added that the company is looking at an initial public offering (IPO) in 18-24 months, by which time the TPV would have reached USD 40-45 billion, with revenues of USD 500 million.
Merchant business will be profitable in 12-15 months
In preparation for the IPO, BharatPe will look for deeper products.
“We used to do unsecured loans with our NBFC partners initially, then we launched secured loans, gold a few months back, and now we want to launch auto loans at some point,” he said, adding that the firm will look to enable merchants. To acquire customer.
Thanks to the commitment and hard work by our world-class team, BharatPe recorded the strongest quarter in its history. We have registered 4 times growth in our total revenue in the same period last year. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, despite the third wave of COVID-19, the growth has been 30 per cent.
“Compared month-on-month, all of our metrics grew at the fastest pace – merchant total payment value or TPV (17 percent), consumer TPV (39 percent), credit facility (31 percent), and revenue (21 percent). ) percent) in March 2022 over February 2022,” he pointed out.
Going forward, “we are well placed to break out of our merchant business and further strengthen our consumer business,” he said.
When asked about fundraising, he said that BharatPe has USD 400 million in the bank and monthly burns of USD 4 million, so it does not need to raise capital.