Bangalore-based Cashfree, which offers a range of online payments services to businesses, raises $35.3M Series B led by Apis Partners with participation from YC
Cashfree, an Indian startup that offers a wide-range of payments services to businesses, has raised $35.3 million …
Context & Ripple Effects
Cashfree's $35.3M Series B lands mid-way through a funding surge in Indian digital payments: earlier in 2020, merchant-focused BharatPe raised a $75M Series C valuing it above $400M, showing investors were already paying up for payments infrastructure on both the business and merchant sides.
The round also proved to be an inflection point rather than a peak — Cashfree went on to raise a $53M Series C led by Krafton, reportedly lifting its total funding to nearly $100M, while Bangalore rival Razorpay scaled even faster toward a $160M Series E at a $3B valuation.
First-order effects
- Cashfree gains fresh capital from Apis Partners and YC to expand its range of online payments services for businesses, entering 2021 with a war chest against better-funded rivals.
Second-order effects
- Razorpay and BharatPe face pressure to keep raising and bundling more services — Razorpay's subsequent mega-round shows the SMB payments race escalating into a capital-intensity contest.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Indian business-payments infrastructure consolidates around a handful of heavily capitalized Bangalore platforms, with successive rounds (Series B through E) determining which players survive the pricing and feature war.
The trend: Indian digital-payments startups are drawing progressively larger rounds from global and strategic investors, turning Bangalore into the center of gravity for the country's payments infrastructure buildout.