Cashfree is an Indian start-up that provides multiple payment services to business across the country and recently it has announced to raise USD 35.3 million in its latest Series B funding round, as the company looks forward to strengthening its roots in the market and scaling up their offerings.
The Series B funding round was led by Apis Partners, a London-based private equity firm which invested in Cashfree through its Growth Fund II.
The funding round also witnessed participation from Cashfree’s existing investors Smilegate Investments and well-known Y Combinator.
The latest round brought the company’s raise to a total of USD 42 million.
Cashfree started back in 2015 with a solution to ease cash collection methods for delivery agents in Bangalore’s restaurant segment. The company that was founded by Reeju Datta and Akash Sinha did not really have any prior experience with payment services or payments business in general.
The inception of the idea came to their minds when their merchants asked the founders if there could be a service to accept payments online without any cash involvement. This was when they realised, that Cashfree could aim and serve a wider purpose.
Well, this idea was either not well-presented or well-perceived by the investors; Cashfree struggled to on-board investors at the beginning of its journey. Most of them did not think that a payments processing firm could be big enough to be profitable, but this changed when Y Combinator agreed to back the company. However, according to reports, the founders missed Y Combinator’s deadline and couldn’t join the batch on time but later on, Y Combinator accepted Cashfree’s application and invested in the company’s seed funding round.
Well, this was just the beginning for Cashfree, five years since then; the company helps more than 50,000 businesses in their payments and offers more than a dozen products and services to its users. Be it salary disbursement, accepting payments online or setting up recurring payments for every week/every month, Cashfree covers it all and even settles market commissions.
Some of Cashfree’s customers include India’s top brands and businesses, such as Zomato- the food delivery app, PayPal and Shopify- banking services & Marketing Strategy From SpotifyStorm, Amazon Pay, BigBasket- online grocer, Ixigo- travel ticketing service, HDFC Ergo and Acko- insurance companies etc.
According to market speculations, Cashfree is also looking to explore international markets in cross-border payments solutions to expand their business horizon and be the leader in payments space in India and abroad in emerging markets.
