Exclusive: BharatPe secures Rs 200 Cr in debt from ICICI, Alteria and Innoven

Merchant focused QR code-based payments firm BharatPe has secured Rs 200 crore in debt from ICICI Bank, Alteria Capital and Innoven Capital. The debt infusion has come at a time when the company put a joint bid with Centrum Group to acquire the scam-hit lender Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank.

Alteria and ICICI have loaned Rs 90 crore and Rs 49 crore respectively in the New Delhi-based firm, regulatory filings show. With Rs 60 crore worth debt infusion from Innoven last week, the firm has raised Rs 200 crore in total debt till date.

This is the first round of debt financing for BharatPe and one of the largest debt closure by a growth stage fintech company in recent past. The size of debt also shows that investors are bullish about the company. 

BharatPe is in the market to raise over $200 million in equity at a valuation of over $900 million. It is also in talks to raise around $500-$700 million in debt for the next two years.

In February, BharatPe had gathered $75 million in its Series C round led by New York-based hedge fund Coatue Management and Palo Alto-based Ribbit Capital. Entrackr had exclusively reported the development in which the company was estimated to have reached a post-money valuation of $410 million.

BharatPe has become one among a few startups in the payments space in India to raise that much funds from venture debt providers. Queries sent by Entrackr to BharatPe did not elicit an immediate response. 

Launched by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani, the two-year-old company provides a single interface or interoperable QR code for all existing UPI apps such as Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM, Mobikwik and others.

Besides its core business, BharatPe had also forayed into the point of sale (PoS) business in June 2020 to compete with already established players such as Pine Labs, Mswipe, Innoviti, Jio, PhonePe and Paytm.