Simpl eyes aggressive growth backed by partner investors

By Leandra Monteiro

Simpl, one of India’s leading Pay-Later platforms has secured an asset-based facility from Franklin Templeton, Finuvo LLC and Catalina Finance to fund the rapid growth of its 1-click pay-later offering. The funding line will support close to $1 billion in annual payment volume.

The recent capital infusion, along with the Series B funding last year, will allow Simpl to accelerate the growth of its existing businesses, which have already demonstrated robust organic growth with minimal marketing spend, historically. Simpl will also be doubling its engineering, product, data science and sales teams to work on a suite of new merchant and consumer-facing products to enable zero friction commerce experiences. The company will continue to address the three fundamental frictions in e-commerce – user experience, trust and speed.

After growing its merchant base by 10x in the last 12 months to more than 10,000 online retailers, Simpl is seeing strong growth acceleration in user-base and payment volumes. Besides the growing merchant network that now includes bellwethers such as Jio, Zomato, Bigbasket and MakeMyTrip, Simpl’s growth is fueled by the rise of e-commerce and consumers’ increasing demand for safe, seamless and cashless premium payment options.

Commenting on the financing, Simpl’s Co-Founder & CEO Nitya Sharma said, “Since the pandemic broke out, Simpl has seen even more acceptance among new customer cohorts, thanks to the greater safety we offer via our 1-tap transactions. While the customer response validates our operating model, the current financing represents a landmark transaction by bringing blue-chip balance sheet partners on board, which will allow us to scale the business quickly and efficiently.”

“Finuvo is pleased to provide asset-backed financing in support of Simpl’s mission to enable a safe and seamless buying experience for consumers in India,” said Heather Hamilos, CEO of Finuvo LLC. “Simpl’s business model produces high-quality, short-duration receivables, and its underwriting mechanism has produced remarkably consistent results during a volatile period. The company’s strong credit performance and experienced management team give us the confidence to support its continued rapid growth.”

On the transaction, Russell Byrne, CFO – Simpl, added, “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this transaction as we were most thoughtful with the structure to ensure Simpl has scalable access to a capital base of global investors. As the market appreciates the combination of low risk, short duration and high data visibility, we now have a robust team of funding partners and infrastructure in place to scale the business.”