Bessemer, Dutch development bank pick up stake in Innoviti

Mayur.Shetty@timegroup.com

Mumbai:

Innoviti

, a payments company that facilitates retail outlets to accept card and digital payments, has raised series-C funding led by the Netherlands-based FMO: Entrepreneurial Development Bank, and US-based

Bessemer Venture Partners

.

Although the company did not disclose the size of the investment, a source said it was around the $18-million mark, that it raised in its series-B round from SBI FMO and Bessemer Venture Partners in 2017. Prior to the latest funding, the company had raised $25 million through various rounds of investment.

Speaking to TOI, Innoviti CEO Rajeev Agarwal said the company was helping merchants extract the full power of digital payments by integrating payments with the merchants’ systems. Such intelligent solutions were not possible with standalone terminals and

QR

stickers, he said. “We are adding value beyond payments and helping businesses become more efficient and improve sales. We are now going to deploy resources in coming out with a category-specific solution for each retail segment,” said Agarwal. This included segments like fashion and mobile phones. He added that the company was also looking at building specialised distribution models that can support these solutions at scale by leveraging its relations with trade and industry.

Innoviti processes over $6.5 billion of annualised offline merchant payment volume, which is around 5% of India’s brick-and-mortar retail sales. The focus on value-added products has translated into a 250% revenue growth over a 180% merchant volume growth since series-B funding in 2017. The company was aiming to earn an ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) profit in March this year. However, this has got pushed to the middle of the current fiscal due to the lockdown.

“Innoviti has been using payments technology to find new and unique ways of helping small businesses grow efficiently. In a fast-developing economy like India, the use of technology is critical to make MSME’s competitive in the marketplace and provide them with efficient and sustainable access to financial services. We are excited about partnering with Innoviti through our recently established Ventures Program,” said FMO director (private equity) Jaap Reinking.

According to Bessemer Venture Partners MD Vishal Gupta, digital payments can do far more for businesses than move money. “The usefulness of vanilla terminals and QR stickers is limited, as businesses demand more from payment solution providers, more intelligence, reliability and savings.” Following the investment, Bessemer and Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures are the largest investors in the company followed by SBI Capital and FMO. Titan Industries was among its earliest investor.


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