Razorpay to pick up stake in Ezetap

Tiger Global-backed fintech unicorn Razorpay has agreed to buy a controlling stake in payment solutions startup Ezetap Mobile Solutions for $126 million ( ₹1,000 crore) in a cash-and-stock deal, two individuals familiar with the deal said.

The transaction will comprise $100 million in cash and the rest as equity, one of the two people cited above said, requesting anonymity. The transaction is likely to close within a few days, the second person added.

Razorpay and Ezetap didn’t respond to emailed queries till press time.

VCCircle was the first to report about the deal in January this year.

Earlier on Tuesday, news website Entrackr wrote about the development citing regulatory filings by Ezetap’s holding company in Singapore.

Razorpay competes with startups such as Paytm, Innoviti Payment Solutions and Pine Labs in India’s payment solutions industry.

Razorpay, which is also backed by Sequoia Capital India and MasterCard among others, has struck a few acquisitions of late. This February, it took a majority stake in Malaysian fintech firm Curlec, marking its first international acquisition.

In 2020, Razorpay bought Tera Finlabs, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based risk tech SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform. It also acquired Opfin, a payroll and HR management solution in 2019. In 2018, Razorpay marked its first acquisition with Thirdwatch, a fraud analytics AI-platform.

Byas Nambisan, Ezetap’s chief executive, has previously said that his company is in talks with several investors, mostly global and local strategic firms, besides prominent venture capital funds to raise around ₹450 crore in funding. The company has raised $55-60 million in funding till date. Nambisan took charge of Ezetap in 2019 after co-founders Abhijit Bose and Bhaktha Keshavachar left to join WhatsApp and to start a new venture in deep technology respectively.

Bengaluru-based Ezetap, which began operations in 2011, had initially started in the fintech space by processing card payments on mobile phones, also known as mobile point-of-sale (mPOS), for large enterprises and businesses. It was then catering to over 300 big and small firms including Amazon, Airtel, Reliance, Indian Oil Corporation, Bigbasket and Urban Ladder.

The company later pivoted to a bank partnership model, which led to a turnaround in its fortunes. Under the model, Ezetap began approaching banks with a full suite of solutions on an Android terminal, including sector-specific payment solutions and value-added features like billing, instant EMIs via debit and credit cards, auto reconciliation and analytics. It is now working with Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank among banks. It has also tied up with government institutions such as the municipal corporation of Chennai for tax collection, Guwahati Municipal Corporation to provide citizen services, and Bengaluru Traffic Police (E-challan App).

The company claims to have processed $8 billion in annualized gross transaction value (GTV) through 400,000 retail points till date, and aims to hit ₹7,500 crore in annual revenue by 2024.  

Set up in 2014, Razorpay Software, a unit of Razorpay Inc., is a full-stack financial services firm offering technology payment solutions to over 8 million businesses. Founded by IIT Roorkee alumni, Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay is the second Indian startup to be a part of Silicon Valley’s largest tech accelerator, Y Combinator.

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