Tag: BharatPe’

Business

BharatPe expands the reach of its POS business by 25X: Records the fastest-ever scale up in the industry

Jan 29, 2022 by Praveen 0 Comments #BharatPe’, #POS business, #Suhail Sameer

New Delhi, January 27, 2022: BharatPe, India’s leading fintech company for merchants, today announced that it has ramped up the reach of its POS business (BharatSwipe) by 25X to 250+ cities in the last 12 months. Since the launch of its POS business in the second half of 2020, the company has deployed more than 1.25 lakh BharatSwipe machines across offline shops. Achieving this rare feat in a short span of close to 1.5 years, BharatPe has scripted history as the fastest-ever scale-up on the POS business in India.

BharatPe, which is the No. 3 private POS player in India, also announced that the company has witnessed 200% growth in the annualized transaction value from its POS business, over the last 12 months. BharatSwipe now contributes about 25% to the overall payments Transaction Processed Value (TPV) of the company. The phenomenal growth can be attributed to the expansion of the company’s POS business in non-metro cities, with more than 50% of BharatSwipe machines being deployed in tier 2/tier 3 towns and cities since 2021. BharatSwipe has been universally adopted by small merchants and retailers across categories including grocery, food & beverage, electronics and durables, among others.

Speaking about the aggressive expansion, Mr. Suhail Sameer, CEO, BharatPe, said “BharatSwipe has been the biggest growth story in India’s POS industry- from making a humble beginning with 10 cities in the middle of COVID in 2020 to processing US$4 bn payments annually today. Over the course of last year, we have witnessed multi-fold growth in our POS business, led by our aggressive expansion plans in tier-2, 3 and 4 towns and cities. We realized that a large number of merchants in the smaller cities have not used a POS machine ever, owing to the traditional high rentals associated with POS and hence, took it as an opportunity to push our zero-rental POS machines. We were able to take POS to several small merchants in last-mile areas with low digital penetration like Alappuzha, Azamgarh and Chalisgaon. In fact, over 60% of our merchants are first time POS users.”

Added Suhail, “The transition to digital payments offers a range of benefits for the merchants and the economy at large- including customer delight in the times of pandemic, a better record of transactions and most importantly, access to credit. The addition of POS enables us to further assess the financial strength of a merchant from his daily transactions and thus, facilitate business loans as per the merchant’s eligibility, in partnership with NBFCs.”

BharatSwipe is India’s first zero-rental card acceptance machine that offers merchants the option for zero transaction fees. Launched in the middle of COVID in 2020, BharatSwipe received a great response due to its disruptive business model. With BharatSwipe, merchants can also generate physical receipts for both QR transactions done on BharatPe UPI QR.

In August last year, BharatPe announced a strategic partnership with Axis Bank. As a part of the association, Axis Bank became the acquiring bank for BharatPe’s point of sale (POS) business, BharatSwipe, and enables the acceptance of credit and debit cards for merchants associated with BharatPe.  BharatPe will continue to ramp up strategic partnerships with banks, financial institutions and brands with the objective of enhancing the customer experience on its POS devices. The company targets to reach US$ 30 billion TPV on payments through both QR and Swipe by March 2023.

News

BharatPe appoints ‘Sumeet Singh’ as General Counsel & Head- Corporate Strategy

Jan 6, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #‘General Counsel and Head- Corporate Strategy, #Ashneer Grover, #BharatPe’, #Co-founder and CEO, #Sumeet Singh

Mumbai: BharatPe, India’s leading financial services company for merchants, today announced the appointment of ‘Sumeet Singh’ as the ‘General Counsel and Head- Corporate Strategy’. The appointment will further bolster the leadership team at BharatPe, which currently is a mix of renowned professionals across industries.

Sumeet Singh is a seasoned legal professional with 10+ years of experience across leading law firms including AZB & Partners, DSK Legal and Amarchand Mangaldas. Sumeet brings deep understanding of legal, compliance, regulatory and structuring aspects of multiple sectors including non-banking financial, retail, e-commerce, FMCG, digital media and technology.

Sumeet who is expected to join BharatPe soon is currently a Partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, New Delhi, having joined the erstwhile Amarchand Mangaldas Suresh A. Shroff in 2013 from AZB. Sumeet has actively represented some of India’s biggest e-commerce, retail entities, financial companies and start-ups. Recently, he was part of the core team advising Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, in its acquisition of the entire retail & wholesale and logistics & warehousing business of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group. He has also been advising Norwest Venture Partners (a US$ 9 billion investment fund) in all their recent investments in India including in Xpressbess, OFB Tech, Ess Kay Fin Corp, Veritas Finance etc. He has been an advisor to Grofers since its early days leading their fund raising work. Additionally, Sumeet represented Indiamart on its pre-IPO fund raising. Sumeet’s other marquee representations include clients like Nestle, IFC, Inshorts, IDFC Alternatives Limited (now Global Infrastructure Partners), Qatar based Q Invest, Raine Group and NewsCorp.

Commenting on the appointment of Sumeet, Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and CEO, BharatPe said, “2020 has been an exciting and solid growth year for BharatPe. As we get ready to welcome 2021, I would like to welcome Sumeet to the team. Sumeet will be the first partner at a major law firm to join a startup. I’ve known Sumeet professionally and personally for 5 years and there is no one better to steer BharatPe on its goal to be India’s first true digital bank. He will be responsible for corporate strategy, compliance, licensing, equity and debt deals, ESOP schemes, cap table management and preparation for eventual listing.”

Sumeet added “I am excited to join Ashneer and his solid team of CXOs as they build out a truly differentiated and capital efficient Fintech at BharatPe. The way BharatPe has broken away from the Fintech crowd to create a solid business, bodes well for the future and I am honoured to contribute to this amazing growth.”

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BharatPe topples Google Pay to become #3 in UPI P2M

Dec 10, 2020 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #BharatPe’, #CEO, #co-Founder, #Group President, #Mr. Ashneer Grover, #Mr. Suhail Sameer

Mumbai: BharatPe, India’s largest merchant payments company announced that it has become the 3rd largest player in the Merchant UPI payment acceptance space. The company has recorded INR 3,334 crores (US$ 479 million) in transaction value for the month of November, displacing Google Pay from the No. 3 position. The company shared that it processed 6.15 crores transactions in November 2020.

BharatPe has been outgrowing the market and has doubled its market share in the UPI P2M merchant payment acceptance category since April 2020. In November 2020, BharatPe has reached all-time high 5% market share by transaction value and 7% market share by transaction volume. The volume of transactions processed by BharatPe standalone last month is greater than the combined UPI P2M transaction volume of JIO, Zomato, Swiggy, CRED, FlipKart, CashFree, IRCTC and MPL.

Talking about the milestone, Mr. Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and CEO, BharatPe, said, “BharatPe is an Indian startup and it is a proud moment for us to displace a global behemoth like Google Pay from the No. 3 position. The offline retail market is, in order of magnitude, larger than the online/ecommerce market in a country like India and digitizing fast. BharatPe’s differentiated financial services proposition focused at the merchant outweighs all other services being targeted by other UPI / VAS players. Big congratulations to BharatPe team for having delivered growth in 26 / 28 months since inception and growing 4X through COVID!”

Added Mr. Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe, “The BharatPe team is extremely excited and enthused with this achievement. We are gearing up for new challenges and are committed to empower merchants to scale their business. We have bigger targets ahead of us. We intend to grow our business five times in the next 2 years, to cross US$ 30 bn TPV. We are bullish on lending and aim to disburse loans of US$1 bn to small merchants and kiranas by 2023.”

BharatPe offers a range of fintech products to help small merchants grow their business.  These include industry’s first interoperable UPI QR with zero transaction fee, a range of credit and insurance products, the POS machine and digital gold. Also, it offers attractive collateral-free loans of upto Rs. 7 lakhs at competitive interest rates to merchants. BharatPe has a unique loan hybrid repayment model with a combination of daily QR/ POS collection and weekly payments made directly from the bank account to the merchants availing loans. The company announced its aggressive expansion plans across Tier-1, 2 and 3 cities in the country. The company is currently present in 50+ cities and plans to scale up its presence to 65 cities by Mar 2021.

Business World

BharatPe’s POS business grows to US$ 2bn annualized transaction value in 3 months ~ Targets US$ 5bn annualized transaction value from POS by the end of FY21

Nov 27, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #BharatPe’, #BharatSwipe, #Mr. Suhail Sameer

BharatPe, India’s largest merchant payments company, today announced that it has recorded the fastest ever scale up on POS in the industry. BharatPe’s POS business has grown to US$ 2bn annualized transaction value in just 3 months post the launch. The company announced that its POS business now contributes to 25% of the annualized transaction value. The company currently offers this product in 10 cities of the country and plans to ramp it up to 40 cities by the end of the current fiscal year. It has set a target of US$ 5bn POS annualized transaction value from the POS business by end of FY21.

BharatSwipe, the POS machine from BharatPe launched in the second half of 2020 is India’s first zero rental card machine that offers the merchants the option for zero transaction charges. It allows the merchants to accept payments from a range of credit and debit cards. Additionally, the merchant can generate a receipt for both card and QR transactions. BharatSwipe has received an overwhelming response from small merchants across industries including kirana store owners, restaurant owners as well as entrepreneurs with 4-5 outlets.

Talking about the success of BharatSwipe, Mr. Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe, said, “BharatSwipe has been one of our biggest success stories. In just about a quarter, our POS business is now 1/4th of our annualized transaction value. We launched the POS machine with zero rental and zero transaction fee which resonated well with the merchant community and helped us get a headstart in this competitive market.

This success is also a testimony of our in-depth understanding of small merchants’ financial services requirements. Interestingly, our average daily active merchants on POS are much higher than the industry average. We will be aggressively focusing on building this business as we expand to newer markets. We currently have close to 35,000 machines in the market and are targeting 1,00,000 POS machines deployment by the end of the current fiscal. Also, we have recently launched cash advance loans based on the merchant’s POS transaction data and initial data looks very promising. We will be scaling this up in the coming months.”

BharatPe offers a range of fintech products to help small merchants grow their business. These include industry’s first interoperable UPI QR with zero transaction fee, a range of credit and insurance products, the POS machine and digital gold. It recently announced its aggressive expansion plans across Tier-1, 2 and 3 cities in the country. The company is currently present in 35+ cities and plans to scale up its presence by adding another 30 cities to its list by December 2020.

Business World

BharatPe announces massive expansion plans: Aims to scale up to 65 cities by December 2020

Nov 20, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #BharatPe’, #expansion, #Mr. Suhail Sameer

BharatPe, India’s largest merchant payment company, today announced aggressive expansion plans across tier-1, 2 and 3 cities in the country. The company, that is currently present in 35+ cities, plans to substantially scale up its presence by adding another 30 cities to its list by December 2020. The cities, spread across India, include tier-1 cities like Kolkata and Chennai, emerging cities like Coimbatore, Kochi, Dehradun, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Patna as well as tourist hubs like Amritsar, Varanasi, Agra, Allahabad, amongst others. The company aims to add another 3 million merchants to its existing list of over 5 million merchants by the end of FY 21.

The announcement is in line with the company’s commitment to becoming the preferred financial services partner for over 60 million SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in India. The company will be rolling out its one-of-a-kind interoperable UPI QR with zero transaction fees, and it’s recently launched zero rental, zero fees card acceptance machine (BharatSwipe) in the new cities. Additionally, BharatPe would be offering attractive collateral-free loans of upto Rs. 7 lakhs at competitive interest rates to merchants, with the objective of helping them grow their business. BharatPe will offer its hybrid repayment model with a combination of daily QR/ POS collection and weekly payments made directly from the bank account to the merchants availing loans.

Speaking on the expansion, Mr. Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe, said “The pandemic has fuelled exponential growth of digital payments industry in the country as a large number of customers are opting for cashless payments. We have seen our business grow manifold over the last few months. Our payments vertical has recorded consistent double-digit growth on a month-on-month basis. Also, our lending vertical has scaled very well and we are on track to disburse loans of Rs. 1000 crores by the end of the year.”

Added Suhail “We are committed to creating a well-rounded financial ecosystem for SMEs with our variety of products including payments, loans, gold and insurance. This decision to double our footprint in the country is in line with this. We have handpicked cities that are either business hubs or emerging commercial centres, for this phase of expansion. We look forward to enabling millions of more businesses in the new cities we are venturing in.”

BharatPe will be rolling out its range of financial services for merchants, across all the new cities. These include Amritsar, Kota, Guntur, Kakinada, Rajahmundry, Jodhpur, Coimbatore, Madurai, Nagpur, Kochi, Trichy, Raipur, Trivandrum, Bilaspur, Durg Bhilai, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Patna, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, Chennai, Agra, Allahabad, Aurangabad, Dehradun, Patiala, Rohtak, Silchar, Agartala, Shillong and Varanasi.

Business World

BharatPe appoints Ex-Union Bank Chairman ‘Kewal Handa’ as Independent Director

Nov 5, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Ashneer Grover, #BharatPe’, #Mr. Ashneer Grover, #Mr. Kewal Handa, #SME

BharatPe, India’s largest merchant payment company, today announced the appointment of Kewal Handa as an Independent Director. Formerly associated with Union Bank of India and Pfizer, Mr Handa will be joining the Founders – Ashneer and Shashvat, Jitendra Gupta (ex PayU) and Micky Malka (Ribbit) on the Board of BharatPe. He will be mentoring and advising BharatPe on its overall business strategy as it expands across markets and product categories.

With demonstrated leadership and excellence in guiding companies to scale up its positions, Mr Handa has diverse experience in Finance, Commercial, Strategy and Business Development, Corporate Affairs etc. He was the Managing Director of Pfizer Limited, India from 2005 to 2012. Kewal has also been Independent Director at ING Vyasa Bank.

Accorded with various national and international awards, his induction to the Board is in line with BharatPe’s effort to strengthen its leadership team to aggressively capture market opportunities. The company has been launching new product and services aimed at enabling merchants to grow their business. It has recently announced its plan of disbursing loans of Rs. 1,000 crores to small merchants across the country in this financial year.

Said Mr. Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder & CEO, BharatPe, “We are pleased to welcome Mr. Handa on our board. His guidance and banking experience will accelerate our financial services business to the next level. In the current scenario, we are aggressively strengthening our lending and payment offerings, and his insights will be of great value in shaping the right strategies for the brand as we scale up. We are confident that Kewal’s diverse experience in building global businesses will help us create a credible and profitable business.”

On his appointment, Mr. Kewal Handa said,” I am delighted to be part of BharatPe which has already carved its niche in offering digital payment and lending solutions to merchants. BharatPe is already the 4th largest UPI player in India and largest lender in the SME segment. The new normal has augmented the demand for contactless payments in the country and I believe it is the best time to capitalize on it.”

BharatPe has been bolstering its leadership team with hires from the industry. In the recent past, the company has made key hiring at its CXO level including Suhail Sameer as the Group President.

Business World

Art-E Media facilitates BharatPe’s ad campaign films featuring Rohit Sharma and 10 Indian Cricketers shot across 5 states and 2 countries

Oct 13, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Art-E Media, #BharatPe’, #Punit Malhotra, #Suhail Sameer, #Tejendar Sharma

Delhi-NCR based agency, Art-E-Media, who is spearheading the ad campaign for BharatPe, India’s largest merchant payment network has created 4 TV commercials that recently started airing on TV channels. The ad campaign communicates the message ‘Hum Hai Team BharatPe – Jo DeshKeHarDukandaarKeSaathHaiKhade’. Earlier this year, BharatPe had onboarded 11 of India’s best cricket stars as its brand ambassadors, including one of the world’s best opening batsmen Rohit Sharma, top pacers JaspreetBumrah and Mohammed Shami, the stylish batsman KL Rahul, the seasoned all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, as well as Suresh Raina, Shreyas Iyer, Prithvi Shaw, Sanju Samson, YuzvendraChahal, and Shubhman Gill.

Art-E and Student of the Year 2 director, Punit Malhotra, joined hands to make the TV and online commercials for the brand. A series of ad films involving notable television and film actors such as ManojPahwa, Rajesh Balwani, KanchanPagare, Krunal Pandit, etc., showcase BharatPe’s range of financial products for small shop owners across India. Art-E’s in-house production house, Gibbous Films, created the commercials.

With the cricket extravaganza currently underway, the popular appeal of the brand ambassadors will help the platform increase its reach. The BharatPeapp offers a range of financial services for small merchants including the interoperable UPI QR for accepting payments, loans and POS machines. Art-E’s objective has been to make the cricketers and actors craftily include these aspects in their enactment, showing how SMEs stand to benefit from the BharatPe app.

It was challenging for Art-E to pull off 4 TV commercials during an ongoing pandemic. Considering all 11 cricketers were in different locations, it was further challenging to shoot in various geographies, not only national but also international. However, strong planning and talented resourcing enabled they were able to execute the production at one international and five domestic locations, after adopting the necessary safety and social distancing measures. They shot the ads across India, in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, and Trivandrum. The production then moved to Dubai.

Tejendar Sharma, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Art-E Media said “Filming ads with the finest cricketing talents of the country for a revolutionary FinTech company such as BharatPe has been a phenomenal experience. Our team’s collaborative effort has ensured the smooth and safe execution of the project amidst a pandemic. We were able to coordinate the logistics across countries, states during a difficult time, without compromising on the quality and messaging of the films. Scripting, keeping in mind the pandemic and different cricketers in different cities, was a big challenge but it’s a relief to see the output come out so well.”

The amazing Punit Malhotra who directed the films said “We decided to shoot for ads when the unlock procedure started. However, the challenge was to shoot the ad for BharatPe with 11 cricketers while ensuring all safety protocols are met. The shoots had to be done across multiple locations. We could make this happen, even with all the roadblocks coming in our way, because of a like-minded team. We managed to shoot four films, across locations andI absolutely loved the process. Right from creatively jamming with ArtE to delivering the films, the process has been nothing but joy. I only hope that everybody likes the films as much as we enjoyed making them.”

Added Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe, “BharatPe has been the flagbearer of disruptive marketing, since its early years. Cricket is a great unifier and hence, for this year’s campaign, we decided to build our own Playing XI to reach out to merchants and showcase our range of financial products as well as communicate how our products can help the merchants grow their business. Art-E has done a commendable job in creating these TV commercials for us and we are hopeful that they will be able to make a huge impact. We thank them for their commitment to churn out high-quality films, amidst the pandemic.”

Video link: https://youtu.be/U6Ew6vSb0Gk