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Tag: BharatPe

  • BharatPe plans to scale up to 65 cities by December 2020

    BharatPe plans to scale up to 65 cities by December 2020

    NEW DELHI: Merchant payment app BharatPe has announced aggressive expansion plans across tier-1, 2 and 3 cities in India, under which it aims to scale up its presence in 65 locations across the country. The company is currently present in 35+ cities, and has set its sights on adding another 30 cities to its list by December 2020. 

    The cities include tier-1 cities like Kolkata and Chennai, emerging cities like Coimbatore, Kochi, Dehradun, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Patna as well as tourist hubs like Amritsar, Varanasi, Agra, Allahabad, amongst others. The company aims to add another three million merchants to its existing list of over 5 million merchants by the end of FY21. 

    The announcement is in line with the company’s commitment to become the preferred financial services partner for over 60 million SMEs in India. BharatPe will be rolling out its one-of-a-kind interoperable UPI QR with zero transaction fees, and it’s recently launched zero rental, zero fees card acceptance machine (BharatSwipe) in the new cities. Additionally, the app would be extending attractive collateral-free loans of upto Rs 7 lakh at competitive interest rates to merchants, with the objective of helping them grow their business. BharatPe will offer its hybrid repayment model with a combination of daily QR/POS collection and weekly payments made directly from the bank account to the merchants availing loans. 

    BharatPe group president Suhail Sameer said, “The pandemic has fuelled exponential growth of the digital payments industry in the country as a large number of customers are opting for cashless payments. We have seen our business grow manifold over the last few months. Our payments vertical has recorded consistent double digit growth on a month-on-month basis. Also, our lending vertical has scaled very well and we are on track to disburse loans of Rs 1000 crores by the end of the year.” 

    Added Sameer “We are committed to create a well-rounded financial ecosystem for SMEs with our variety of products including payments, loans, gold and insurance. This decision to double our footprint in the country is in line with this. We have handpicked cities that are either business hubs or emerging commercial centres, for this phase of expansion. We look forward to enabling millions of more businesses in the new cities we are venturing in.” 

    BharatPe will be rolling out its range of financial services for merchants, across all the new cities. These include Amritsar, Kota, Guntur, Kakinada, Rajmundri, Jodhpur, Coimbatore, Madurai, Nagpur, Kochi, Trichy, Raipur, Trivandrum, Bilaspur, Durg Bhilai, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Patna, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, Chennai, Agra, Allahabad, Aurangabad, Dehradun, Patiala, Rohtak, Silchar, Agartala, Shillong and Varanasi.
     

  • BharatPe elevates Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl as chief operating officer

    BharatPe elevates Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl as chief operating officer

    MUMBAI: Merchant payment network BharatPe has elevated Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl as its chief operating officer (COO) with immediate effect. In his new role, Bahl will be leading operations across customer support, deployments – QR, Swipe & Cards, KYC, loan disbursals and lead generation. He will incrementally be responsible for building the distributor-to-retailer lending product for BharatPe. 

    An Insead alumnus with extensive experience across industries and domains, Bahl has worked with renowned brands in consulting, financial services and healthcare during his career. Prior to joining BharatPe in January 2020, he was the chief business officer at Roadzen where he led the organization across geographies.

    BharatPe co-founder and CEO Ashneer Grover said, “Bahl has been one of our top performers who understood our vision from Day 1 and worked as an ‘anchor’ to transform operations and experience for our merchant partners. I am confident that we will set new benchmarks in customer experience and operations in the fintech industry in the times to come, under his leadership.” 

    BharatPe chief human resources officer Jasneet Kaur added, “At a time when companies are exercising restraint in awarding appraisals, we are committed to our talent agenda of recognizing and rewarding our best. Internal growth of people is as important for us as is attracting high quality talent.” 

    Bahl has also worked at Airtel Payments Bank as head – B2B (Institutional & Corporate Sales)/ Value Chain Alliances and at Paytm as AVP-business. He had a five-year-long stint at Fortis Healthcare, where he held multiple roles. He has a consulting background and has also worked with Bain and company.   

  • BharatPe reaches out to merchants with its new spots

    BharatPe reaches out to merchants with its new spots

    NEW DELHI: BharatPe, has launched its TV campaign starring ‘Team BharatPe’ with 11 Cricket stars. The TVC series has been directed by ace Bollywood director, Puneet Malhotra, and communicates the message ‘Hum Hai Team BharatPe – Jo Desh Ke Har Dukandaar Ke Saath Hai Khade’. This is the first time that a new age FinTech company has rolled out a TV campaign with 11 top cricket stars as its brand ambassadors. Team BharatPe includes Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, Suresh Raina, Shreyas Iyer, Prithvi Shaw, Sanju Samson, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Shubhman Gill.

    The company is set to redefine the financial services landscape with its four TV advertisements designed to drive awareness around BharatPe’s range of financial products for small shop owners across India, including QR based payment acceptance, no collateral loans, card payment machine with 0% transaction fee, and the exciting loyalty program. The new campaign will feature across channels – TV, Print, Radio, digital and will run throughout the cricket and festive season. 

    BharatPe group president Suhail Sameer said, “BharatPe has been the flagbearer of disruptive marketing. Last year, we created immense brand recall and the merchant connect with Salman Khan as our brand ambassador. Cricket is a great unifier and hence, for this year’s campaign, we decided to build our own team of cricket stars to reach out to merchants and showcase how our range of financial products can help scale their business.”

    BharatPe head – brands and commerce Subhasis Beura said, “We will be rolling out a series of 4 TV ads across channels in the coming days. We are hopeful that this campaign will not only help us engage better with our existing merchants but also enable us to reach out to a wide range of prospective merchants across the country. Our TV campaign is well-timed as the merchants are gearing up to shed the impact of COVID and make the most of the festive season. This is timed to catch the cricket fever and the restart of cricket for Team India.”

    BharatPe AVP marketing Abhishek Shah said, “Cricket is an ‘unrivalled’ communication platform in reach, engagement, and therefore, impact. We have always connected with small merchants through authentic, credible communication by keeping it light and fun like in case of the last year’s campaign with Bollywood superstar, Salman Khan. The objective of the new campaign is to build demand for our products and services and to humanize the brand. The campaign will serve as a quirky reminder to team up with BharatPe to grow your business.”

    Delhi based creative & digital agency ArtE MediaTech facilitated the campaign shoot across two countries and five states.

  • BharatPe banks on cricket for next growth phase

    BharatPe banks on cricket for next growth phase

    NEW DELHI: From Bollywood to cricket. That’s the path fintech brand BharatPe is taking. Bharat Pe, which is positioned as the one stop shop for the payment as well as capital needs of India’s large retailer network, has signed up 11 top cricketers as its brand ambassadors. Among them figure: Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, and Suresh Raina. 

    The 11 cricketers will be featuring in an ad  campaign which is being directed by a top Hindi film director. The purpose: build BharatPe’s brand identity, apart from explaining its unique features, positioning and thought process to merchants. The sportsmen have been banded under a group which has been called BharatPe XI. The ad campaign is set to be unfurled closer to the festival period and will encompass TV, radio, OOH, digital, as well as print media.

    The company, which is heavily funded by top investors like Sequoia, Beenext, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital management, Ribbit Capital, Coatue and Amplo, had earlier roped in Bollywood A-lister Salman Khan for its launch campaign #AbDukandarJitega.

    BharatPe group president Suhail Sameer, who got on board the fintech firm as recently as August 2020, points out that the Salman association helped the brand get noticed, and connect with the merchant community who were  loathe to use digital payment options.

    “We decided to go ahead with cricket this year as it is one sport that brings Indians together, irrespective of their region, religion, or financial status,” he explains.

    Read more news on BharatPe

    Co-founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani, BharatPe’s mission is to make financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants, especially across tier 1, 2 and 3 cities. BharatPe, since its launch, has been empowering shop owners with a single zero MDR UPI based QR code which allows them to accept payments from any app  – like PayTm, PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM and 150+ other UPI apps – at no cost to them. The cash goes directly into the retailer’s bank account and he or she can earn interest on it and even take loans if the need arises.

    Sameer shares that the initial task for BharatPe was to create awareness amongst the merchant community and educate them about how digital payments work.  Says he: “We have invested time and effort to educate the merchants and built trust with them. We offered them the convenience of accepting digital payments, irrespective of the consumer’s preferred choice of digital payment.”

    The Salman campaign helped the company on board merchants in tier-1 and tier-2 towns and cities. As of early 2020, it had managed to rope in close to three million retailers. Average transaction values which were Rs 500 earlier rose by 60-65 per cent in early 2020.

    SAMEER THINKS BOLLYWOOD
    AND CRICKET ACT AS UNIFIERS

    Covid2019 and the lockdown hit BharatPe hard, with transactions dipping in the first few weeks. But with the country unlocking, these have been picking up pace. Even merchant signups have ballooned to five million, and the target is to take that number to six million by end this fiscal. BharatPe is present in 35 cities and processes five crore plus monthly UPI transactions.

    “In September, we are already at 50 per cent above the pre-Covid2019 levels in the value of the transactions we process (at $4 billion annually). We aim to close the year at a run rate of $5 billion in annual total payment value,” reveals Sameer.

    Currently 15-20 per cent of the total transactions come from tier-2 areas and the next wave of growth will come from tier-2 and 3 markets, Sameer reveals Covid2019, which accelerated digitisation in the country has benefited BharatPe, like many other digital first brands, as consumers are choosing to go in for contactless transaction with the pandemic still raging.

    The company is on an expansion spree even on the lending side – an activity which was kickstarted a year ago. So far, it has disbursed loans in excess of Rs 250 crore, despite the Covid2019 related slowdown. It has set a target  to disburse around Rs 700 crore in the next six months. “We did consciously slow down on our lending during the lockdown months, but have scaled well since July 2020,” highlights Sameer. “We are confident we will surpass Rs. 700 crore for the rest of the year, and are internally gearing for higher numbers.”

    He is also sanguine that the cricketer-led advertising campaign will redefine how fintech marketing can be done. In the process, it will help BharatPe get closer to its goals.

  • BharatPe ropes in Suresh Raina as brand ambassador

    BharatPe ropes in Suresh Raina as brand ambassador

    NEW DELHI- Suresh Raina is ready to play for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the United Arab Emirates for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020. Meanwhile, he has been appointed as the brand ambassador for the fintech platform BharatPe. Before flying off to UAE, Raina has decided to shoot for the brand’s promotional campaign. 

    Raina who had announced his retirement from the international cricket along with MS Dhoni, uploaded the video of the promotional shoot. 

    Earlier in the month of March, flush with Rs 535 crore ($75 million) Series C funding, BharatPe had announced its plans to sign 11 Indian national cricketers as its brand ambassadors. Some of these cricketers are Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, Sanju Samson, Mohammed Shami, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Shubham Gill.

    However, due to the novel coronavirus, the Delhi based platform could not start any activity with the signed cricketers. 

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi also highlighted Raina's contribution in the 2011 World Cup triumph, saying the all-rounder had always been a team man. Modi said Raina’s name is ‘synonymous’ with ‘team spirit’.

    Co-founded in 2018 by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani, the startup is working towards driving the adoption of UPI among merchants, as well as providing them with working capital loans.

  • BharatPe appoints Suhail Sameer as group president

    BharatPe appoints Suhail Sameer as group president

    NEW DELHI: BharatPe has further fortified its leadership team by appointing Suhail Sameer as group president. Suhail along with CEO & co-founder Ashneer Grover will have overall responsibility for building the organisation, merchant network, business, and revenue.

    An IIM Lucknow and DCE alumnus, Sameer is the first Group President at BharatPe and will have all the CXOs report into him. Winner of Economic Times Most Promising Leader of Asia Award, Sameer has extensive experience of working with companies from the Consumer (FMCG, retail) and consumer technology sectors, and with Institutional investors. He has built businesses from scratch, as well as helped turn around and grow existing companies.

    Featured as Business World 40 under 40 in the year 2019, Sameer at RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, launched and scaled the multi-brand FMCG business for the Group. He also set-up and led their consumer VC fund, RPSG Ventures. Additionally, he drove growth and portfolio decisions across many group companies. Sameer is also the managing partner at OTP Venture Partners, which invests in early-stage companies across consumer, consumer tech, and SaaS spaces.

     In his early career, Suhail led McKinsey’s clean-tech practice for south Asia and the Power practice for India.

     BharatPe co-founder & CEO Ashneer Grover said, “I am super excited to welcome Suhail Sameer in his new role as the Group President. Suhail is a top-class professional operator and has remarkable track record of delivering – whether it is building businesses ground up or managing conglomerates. The Founders and the Board are extremely excited to entrust Suhail with building the business and revenue on back of BharatPe’s brand and network, that has been created over the last 2 years. Look forward to him leading us to 10X growth from here on.”

    BharatPe group president Suhail Sameer said, “There is hardly another startup better positioned to solve merchant’s capital and payment requirements in the country than BharatPe. I have been in touch with Ashneer and the team for over a year now, and I have immense conviction in the mission of the company. BharatPe has emerged even stronger from the current COVID scenario, doubling its market share, which is truly remarkable."

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  • BharatPe appoints Ex-Walmart Labs’ Ankur Jain as chief product officer

    BharatPe appoints Ex-Walmart Labs’ Ankur Jain as chief product officer

    MUMBAI: BharatPe has strengthened its leadership team by appointing Ankur Jain as chief product officer. Ankur will be responsible for the complete product lifecycle and innovation at BharatPe. Jain is the fifth CXO at BharatPe and joins Vijay Agarwal (CTO), Nishit Sharma (chief revenue officer), Puneet Agarwal (chief risk officer), and Nishant Jain (chief business officer) in the core team.

    Heading product management and user experience across customer touch points, Jain will contribute to BharatPe’s aggressive plans to scale up its footprint to 10 million merchants this year. Jain, an alumnus of Stanford University has a rich experience of working in deep technology startups like Kosmix and Instalocate and the world’s largest company Walmart. He has developed large scale products which have been used by millions of people across the globe driving huge revenues for the organisations. He was part of the founding team to set up Walmart Labs office in India and has substantial experience of building cross-functional teams in business, technology and product verticals across the globe.

    BharatPe co-founder-CEO Ashneer Grover said, “We are at an interesting point in our growth phase that requires constant innovation and fast delivery of products for the rapidly evolving digital and financial needs of Indian shopkeepers. We are methodically getting the right people in the right positions to meet these requirements. Talent will be our biggest differentiator.”

    “I have a deep respect for the talent that has worked in the US – the vision with and scale at which professionals who have come back from the US operate is commendable. Ankur joining in a critical role will strengthen our core team, he has deep experience in accelerating revenue through new products and solutions, driving large-scale organisational change, and anticipating market dynamics to create new products and segments which will help us drive product innovation at a higher velocity,” Grover added.

    Prior to BharatPe, Jain was CEO and co-founder of Instalocate. The mission of Instalocate is to bring the fintech revolution to the travel industry through an AI-powered travel assistant and convert travel disruptions into instant money. Prior to Instalocate, he worked at Walmart Labs as senior director of product management where he developed artificial intelligence (AI) based products to help merchants in understanding the customer pulse, to decide which products to sell and to set the right price.

    Jain joined Walmart Labs as part of the acquisition of Kosmix by Walmart in 2011. He was the early employee of Kosmix and saw the full product life cycle from initial days to a successful acquisition. At Kosmix, he led the product and growth teams and scaled the user base to hundreds of millions of users. He has deep research experience at some of the prestigious labs in the world including MIT Media Lab, Stanford Technology Ventures, Ericsson Eurolab and Institute for Infocom Research.