India’s second largest private sector lender ICICI Bank has invested ₹8.72 crores in the mobile payments startup ePayLater in order to buy a minority stake as it forays into the fintech sector starting from 2015.
As reported by the bank in its stock exchange filing, ICICI bank will be picking up 9.91% stake in the startup and the deal is expected to be completed by the end of 30 July.
The startup which is totally managed and operated by Arthashashtra Fintech ePayLater, was founded by the 5 IITian Aurko Bhattacharya, Prasannaa Muralidharan, Uday Somayajula, Shanmuhanathan Thiagaraja, along with Akshat Saxena in the year 2015 December with its headquarter which is based out of Mumbai.
The startup provides its customers with the option to ‘buy now and pay later’ on e-commerce platforms with just one a single click of mouse. The customers are given a time period of 14 days to make the payment with an ease. In that period, customers can make more payments and they can be stacked together to make a single payment, which makes their transactions smoother and much easier.
Some of the other services which this startup provide includes mobile recharge, postpaid and utility bill payments, hotel and bus booking, along with offering nearby deals to its customers with huge discounts as well. The startup charges a commission on every transaction from the merchant but not from the customers.
According to the filings, the company has generated revenue of ₹32 lakhs for the fiscal year 2016-17 and incurred a net loss of ₹1.75 crores.
In an earlier news, ICICI Bank had planned to invest ₹100 crores in tech startups through its new fund which they have generated from mutual funds and SIPs. This investment is part of the banks plan to fulfil its investment by the end of the year. Already the bank has spent about ₹40 crores from the fund.
Other investments made by ICICI Bank in the fintech domain include mobile payments startup Taptis Technologies, Aadhaar and Biometric payment solutions Fingpay, along with Arteria Technologies, which offers SAP based supply chain solutions.
Investments in the Indian technology sector is expected to pick up the pace with many other India specific funds being planned by big venture capital firms like Ganesh Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.
