PoS platform Innoviti raises $18 Mn in Series B round

Bengaluru-based PoS (point-of-sale) deploying startup Innoviti has raised $18 million in series B round of funding led by Singapore-based SBI-FMO Fund.

The funding round also saw participation from American venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investor Catamaran.

Founded in 2002 by Rajeev Agrawal, Innoviti is a payments technology firm that helps merchants accept payments across channels such as the web, mobile, in-store or at the time of delivery.

It also operates uniPAY Next and smelending.com. uniPAY allows merchants to accept digital payments through various modes such as cards, wallets as well as UPI while smelending.com helps small merchants get short-term loans to manage their cash flows.

Rajeev Agrawal, chief executive at Innoviti, said, “The new round of funding will be used to expand the market for the uniPAY Next platform and smelending.com product to target payment and lending in order to facilitate working capital loans to kirana stores, small merchants and brand franchisees right across the supply chain.”

Innoviti’s payment platforms serve a client base of merchants, which include Reliance Retail, Titan, Landmark Group, INOX, Indigo and Walmart, among others. Banks such as HDFC, ICICI, Axis, SBI, Standard Chartered, Kotak and Citibank use the platform to access customers for processing their payments and distributing loans.

Agrawal also added that, “We have already deployed around 50,000 terminals and process more than Rs 20,000 crore of payments annually through more than 12 crore transactions.”

The startup hopes to add another 1,000 merchants in smaller towns and double the transaction volume over the next 12 to 18 months.

In July 2016, Innoviti had raised Rs 30 crore from Catamaran Ventures and New India Investment Corporation. Prior to that, in March 2014, the company had secured Rs 10 crore funding from Tata Capital and a group of three individual investors.

Last month, Innoviti tied-up with Sodexo to expand the network of outlets where Sodexo is accepted digitally. And in March this year, Innoviti powered the launch of mobile-based Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments at Reliance Retail stores through a QR-code interface.

Innovit competes with the likes of Mswipe Technologes, Ezetap, ItzCash, including SMEs-focused lending platforms Capital Float and Lendingkart.