Payments and financial services startup BharatPe on Monday said it has raised Rs 50 crore ($7 million) from digital debt financing platform Northern Arc Capital.
Suhail Sameer, group president of BharatPe, said the financing will help underserved businesses in India.
BharatPe has set a target of facilitating disbursals worth $1 billion to over 1 million merchants by the end of March next year, he added.
The financing is the sixth debt fundraise for BharatPe this year.
Earlier this year, it raised Rs 50 crore (around $7 million) in venture debt from Trifecta Capital, Rs 90 crore (around $12.3 million) from Alteria Capital, and Rs 60 crore (around $8.2 million) from InnoVen Capital. It also raised Rs 49 crore from ICICI Bank as well as debt from Axis Bank.
BharatPe also got $108 million (around Rs 785.72 crore) in a Series D funding round led by existing investor Coatue Management in February this year.
The Series D funding also had a secondary component that delivered exits for angel investors and employees.
BharatPe, operated by Resilient Innovations Pvt Ltd, was set up in 2018 by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani. The company allows its customers to track payments in real time. It has also branched into financial services and says it has already facilitated disbursals of over Rs 1,600 crore to more than 2 lakh merchants since the launch of the lending vertical.
Chennai-based Northern Arc Capital (formerly IFMR Capital Finance) is a digital debt platform that caters to the under-banked in India.
In April, Northern Arc Investments, the debt fund manager owned by Northern Arc Capital, announced the closure of its first fund.
Over the last year, Northern Arc Capital has attracted debt financing from an array of global development finance institutions (DFIs) and impact investors such as US International Development Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank, Calvert Impact Capital, and FMO.
In April, Northern Arc Capital received Rs 40 crore ($5.34 million) debt financing from mid-sized private-sector lender Kotak Mahindra Bank to support pandemic-hit micro-entrepreneurs and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
