Mobile Wallet App Mobikwik gets $12 million from strategic investors

Mobile wallet player Mobikwik has raised around $12 million in its series C round of funding led by Japan's GMO Payment Gateway — part of GMO Internet — and Taiwanese semi-conductor firm Mediatek. Its existing investors Sequoia Capital and Treeline Asia have also participated in the current financing round. The amount raised by Mobikwik is far lesser than the $100 million the company was initially looking to rack up, people familiar with the fund-raising process of Mobikwik said.

When contacted by TOI, Upasana Taku, co-founder of Mobikwik said, "We have raised an undisclosed amount in series C right now and we are on track to close the round with the target we had in mind of around $80-100 million." The payments firm indicated it was trying to extend the round to garner more capital.



Mobikwik’s difficult fund-raise comes at a time when mobile wallet providers are on a sticky wicket and their business prospects are being questioned in the wake of the recently launched unified payments interface (UPI) by National Payments Corporation of India. UPI once fully implemented will allow customers to make payments across banks by using a single identifier and without having to enter bank account details. Multiple bank accounts can be linked via UPI as well. Till now, wallet players were seen as being a more convenient option for making online payments compared to mobile banking services of leading banks. Besides, the threat that UPI poses, the overall funding rush among Indian startups has also waned hitting fund-raising plans of many companies.



The Gurgaon-based payments app is presently facing stiff competition from better funded rivals such as Paytm —backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba—and online marketplace Snapdeal-owned Freecharge. It has earlier raised $37 million from a clutch of investors including Tree Line Asia, Cisco Investments, American Express and its early stage backer Sequoia Capital. Mobikwik had applied for a payments banks license but did not get the final nod from the country's central bank. It recently said it will begin to diversify by offering financial products through its platform like loans and mutual funds. The company claims to have about 25- 30 millions users and has been trying to make in roads in offline payments as well.