SaaS-based B2B fintech firm Perfios has emerged as a leader in its segment in both scale and capital raising. The company raised $100 million in total funding including a $70 million Series C round in February 2022. In terms of scale, it managed over 88% growth in FY22.
The operating revenue for the Bengaluru-based startup grew 88.1% to Rs 136.4 crore in FY22 while its losses contracted 62.1%, according to its consolidated financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies.
Perfios offers a bundle of services to financial institutions including income analysis, fraud checks, verification, and automated customer onboarding. Income from these services was the only source of revenue for the firm with Warburg Pincus as key investor.
The firm claims to have over 500 million transactions categorized per month with 80 million API calls. It has 400 clients across 18 countries.
On the cost side, employee benefits expense formed 64.2% of the total cost which surged 52.5% to Rs 97.47 crore in FY22 from Rs 63.92 crore in FY21. It also includes Rs 1.19 crore on ESOP expenses (non-cash).
Being a compliance maintenance and fraud check company, legal and professional costs became the second largest cost center for Perfios followed by the employee benefit cost. This cost grew by 18.3% to Rs 22.83 crore during the last fiscal year.
It also spent another Rs 5.37 crore on rent which pushed Perfios’ overall expenditure by 39.9% to Rs 151.9 crore in FY22. Despite the almost 40% rise in expenses, the company managed to narrow losses by 62.1% to Rs 12.36 crore in FY22 from Rs 32.64 crore in FY21.
ROCE and EBITDA margin of Perfios improved to -1.67% and -5.24% during FY22. Perfios spent Re 1.11 to earn a single unit of operating revenue in the fiscal year ending March 2022.
Deeply-embedded in the BFSI sector, Perfios offers a suite of tools and solutions that are well suited for the evolving sector with more digitisation and market expansion. The firm seems well placed to deliver on profitability soon, and the road to a planned IPO in 2-3 years beckons.
Perfios majorly competes with Signzy, IDfy, Digio and Hyperverge. IDfy’s revenue grew 50% to Rs 56.48 crore in FY22 but it soared 2.5X to Rs 18.72 crore during the same period. Signzy ended last fiscal with Rs 32 crore in revenue and Rs 17 crore loss.