The Fintech (finance and technology) market in India is growing rapidly. Currently it is worth Rs 9.2 lakh crore, it is expected that it will reach Rs 35 lakh crore by the year 2029. There are more than 9 thousand Fintech companies in the country and India is the third largest market in terms of their number. Razorpay, one of the largest companies in this Fintech market, remains a leader in providing payment solutions and services to startups and merchants. Razorpay basically works on BTB i.e. business to business model. Recently it has also been included in the ‘Forbes Cloud 100 list’. It has been selected in this list for the third time. The company claims that out of the 100 unicorn startups in the country, 76 rely on Razorpay for online payments. Razorpay has also recently launched the DoQR device. In this, along with QR payment, payment can also be made through card. Razorpay was also included in Hurun’s Global Unicorn Index (world’s best startups) 2023. There were a total of 6 unicorns from India in this.
It was around 2013-14. Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar were building a social crowdfunding platform in a penthouse in Koramangala area of Bengaluru. The aim was to raise money at the right time. At that time, the thought of starting a startup had not crossed their mind. But when payments started coming for this crowdfunding platform, they saw a promising idea in it. They started a social crowdfunding platform for this.
Talked to the bank. But at that time the process of getting a payment gateway was very complicated and it used to take months. Harshil and Shashank realized that time is the most important thing for a startup. They talked to people associated with startups in Bangalore-Pune, talked in Facebook groups. It was found that everyone was facing payment related problems here. They saw that big payment companies never focused on startups. In this way, Razorpay was started in the year 2014 to solve the payment related problems of startups and small businesses. However, at that time people did not even know about payment gateways. Harshil Shashank had to face hundreds of requests from banks and big financial institutions. But startups agreed to do business with them. In 2015, the first like transaction happened through Razorpay. The process from getting the idea to getting consent from regulators, license, partnership took one and a half years.
Started as a payment gateway….
Razorpay started as a payment gateway for startups. Payment gateway means technology intermediary companies in online payments. From the beginning, its goal was to help startups and small merchants. This also became the reason for the success of Razorpay. UPI in 2016
A total of 8
Acquisitions have been made so far
Razorpay has made 8 acquisitions so far, including ‘Billmi’ in the year 2023. Each deal was done for an average of $ 200 million (about Rs 1600 crore). These include Thirdwatch, curlec, Ezetap, Posh Vine, IZcaliant, TeraFin, Opfin. After the start and increase in digital transactions, the company expanded and started offering banking solutions along with all financial solutions. At the same time, now its transaction volume is also increasing from point of sale machines.