P2P payments platform Instamojo raises funds led by Japan’s Anypay

Bengaluru-based P2P platform Instamojo, that provides on-demand payment for small businesses, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Japan’s payments firm Anypay, while existing investor Kalaari Capital also participated in the pre-Series B round.

The latest proceeds will be used by Instamojo to foray into newer areas and build competencies to enhance offerings for SME users.

The startup was founded in 2012 by Sampad Swain, Aditya Sengupta, Akash Gehani and Harshad Sharma. It offers a link-based payments platform for individuals, micro-merchants, infopreneurs, freelancers, and SMBs to collect payment instantly.

With over 300,000 small and medium businesses on its platform, Instamojo claims to cover 10% of the digitally active SMEs in India and enables about 30% of their turnover annually. Instamojo follows a commission-based revenue model, charging users 2% for use of its payment and e-commerce solutions.

In 2014, Instamojo had last raised a Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, 500Startups and others. Prior to that, it had raised around $500,000 from 500 Startups, Blume Ventures and a consortium of angel investors.

"We will invest in developing a host of offerings that are affordable and simple," CEO Sampad Swain told ET.

He further added, "One of them is lending and credit, the availability of which is hard to come by for small businesses. That is a big opportunity for us and that is where Anypay's network will open doors for us."

In the similar space, Bengaluru-based fin-tech start-up Billionloans, which operates a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, has raised $1 million as a seed funding from Reliance Capital’s arm- Reliance Corporate Advisory Services Ltd.

Another Digital lending platform Lendingkart has raised $10 million in debt from Kotak Mahindra Bank, Aditya Birla Financial Services and Tata Capital including other financial institutions.

Other players in the same segment, includes IndiaLends, Faircent, Kudos Finance and Investment and Capital Float, to name a few.

Instamojo: Website