Indian merchant payment operation BharatPe has achieved a $2.85 million valuation on a $370 million funding round led by US investment group Tuiger Global.
BharatPe has developed a QR code-based payments service using India's UPI infrastructure to help offline merchants accept electronic payments. It also provides working capital to small firms and this year launched its own card acceptance terminal, with more than 50,000 machines already deployed.
The company currently serves more than seven million merchants and has disbursed close to $300 million in loans.
In June the Reserve Bank of India gave in principle approval to the creation of a joint venture small finance bank, equally-owned by BharataPe and Centurm Financial.
Ashneer Grover, co-founder and managing director, BharatPe, comments: "We now have $0.5 billion cash on books and are extremely well-capitalised to deliver on our mandate to build India’s first truly digital bank."
The three-year old company has seen a dramatic rise in its valuation since its last $108 million raise in February, which came with a $900 millionn price tag.
The latest round attracted new investors Dragoneer Investment Group and Steadfast Capital alongside the return of five out of the seven existing institutional investors - Coatue Management, Insight Partners, Sequoia Growth, Ribbit Capital, and Amplo.