Private equity firm Alteria Capital on Sunday said it has invested close to ₹90 crore in payments and alternative lending platform BharatPe, as part of a ₹250-crore fund-raising round. According to a person familiar with the development, apart from Innoven Capital’s ₹60 crore investment announced last week, ICICI Bank invested ₹49 crore in the round, besides other investors.
BharatPe will use the funds to introduce new credit products to merchants and tap more distributors and wholesalers in the retail chain, Alteria said in a statement on Sunday. “We are excited to lead this debt round for BharatPe which is a sign of maturity of the Indian ecosystem,” said Vinod Murali, managing partner, Alteria Capital.
Mint first reported this month that BharatPe is looking to raise more than $500 million in venture debt by 2023 and is in talks to raise $200 million equity by next year. BharatPe is closing to launching its wholesaler financing product ‘BharatPe DtoR’ which stands for distributor to retailer. It will underwrite wholesalers and extend them a credit line, which distributors can offer to their end-retail partners and kirana owners.
“As BharatPe builds towards meeting the small merchants credit needs at scale, raising institutional debt is critical for us. We intend to raise close to $700 million of debt capital over the next two years,” Suhail Sameer, group president, BharatPe said in a statement on Sunday.
Last month, BharatPe partnered with Centrum Group to submit an expression of interest to RBI to take over the distressed assets of PMC Bank.
