BharatPe raises USD 20 million debt from Alteria Capital and ICICI Bank

By Edil Corneille

Indian FinTech BharatPe announced the raise of INR 1.39 billion (~USD 20 million) in debt from venture debt fund Alteria Capital and ICICI Bank. Recently this month, venture debt and specialty lending firm InnoVen Capital invested INR 600 million in BharatPe.

BharatPe raised INR 900 million in debt from Alteria Capital and INR 490 million from ICICI Bank. Funds raised from ICICI Bank are at an interest rate of less than 9%. BharatPe has raised a total of INR 1.99 billion (USD 28 million) in debt till date.

The company has been building its lending vertical and is disbursing loans of INR 2 billion per month to merchant partners currently. BharatPe had set a target of disbursing INR 10 billion of loans in FY21. The latest tranche of debt raised will be used to further build its lending business and enable credit for millions of businesses across India.

Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and CEO, BharatPe said, “It is a great validation of our business model. We have committed ourselves to have US$ 700M of loans to small merchants and kirana store owners by March 2023 and are hoping to on-board more institutional debt partners in the near future. We aim to become a Digital Bank that is the one-stop destination for merchants for all kinds of financial services and this tranche of funds will get things rolling.”

Added Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe said, “Merchants are our top priority and we are committed to solve the credit problem for them. The institutional debt raised will help catapult our lending business. We intend to raise close to US$ 700 million of debt capital over the next 2 years. We are glad that renowned institutional debt funds like Alteria Capital and Innoven Capital as well as a credible bank like ICICI Bank have backed our vision and commitment to transform SME businesses across the country. We have already disbursed loans to more to 1 lac merchants and aim to scale this up by 8-10x and enable credit for a million (10 lac) kirana store owners in 2021.”

“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.