Financial technology firm BharatPe has seen its revenue and transaction volume jump manifold in the financial year 2020-21, as the pandemic has forced people and businesses adopt digital transactions and fund-starved small businesses seeking more credit avenues like this start-up.
The company gives small-ticket fully unsecured loans averaging at Rs 75,000 to it merchant members. It disbursed Rs 1,600 crore in 2020-21 to 1.8 lakh merchant customers, which was only Rs 150 crore in 2019-20. This helped the start-up net a seven-times growth in revenue to over Rs 700 crore, up from around Rs 110 crore in 2019-20.
BharatPe Group President Suhail Sameer told PTI on Thursday that the number of merchants jumped to 60 lakhs in 2020-21 from 24 lakhs in the previous year, transaction volume rose over four times to 10 crores a month or 120 crores annually from 2.7 crore a month in FY20. He added that the transaction value touched around Rs 5,800 crore.
He also added that the loan book has grown more than 10 times to Rs 1,600 crore in small-ticket loans during 2020-21, up from Rs 150 crore in 2019-20. It charges an interest rate of 1.5-2 % per month for a period 1-6 months and a customer with good repayment history can get it even at 1.2 % per month. He claimed that the company has one of the lowest bounce rates in the unsecured credit industry at 4% as against the industry average of over 20%.
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