Stripe Eyes India Expansion With Latest $245 Mn Fund Raise

San Francisco-based payments company Stripe has raised around ₹1,776 crores ($245 million), valuing the company at $20 billion. Stripe’s valuation jumped more than 2x from the previous valuation of $9 billion, two years back, during the previous fundraising.

The round was led by Tiger Global Management, other new backers included DST Global and Sequoia Capital, along with existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and Thrive Capital.

With the fresh funding, the company is looking to venture overseas into the Indian and the Southeast Asian market. The company is looking to tap into the growing e-commerce industry in these markets to expand its payment products. It is looking to target the 500 million users that are expected to become online users in the next three years in Southeast Asia and India.

Stripe was founded by John Collison and Patrick Collison in 2010. It provides a set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enable businesses to accept and manage online payments. The company made its first move in India in December 2017, announcing the launch of Stripe’s beta in India.

In a blog post stripe said, “With Stripe Atlas, we’ve already been able to help some Indian entrepreneurs build and scale global companies. However, we believe that by operating locally in India—with the ability for Indian companies to connect their local bank accounts to Stripe and get paid out in rupees—we can help support even more businesses and more types of business models (such as local marketplaces) in the years to come.”

According to an IBEF report, the Indian e-commerce market was pegged at $38 billion in 2017, it is further expected to grow to $200 billion by 2026. The growing smartphone penetration and the lowering internet costs are expected to drive the growth of e-commerce in India.

Along with other global giants, Stripe is also looking to leverage the growing opportunity in India.