Indian fintech firm Razorpay eyes group profit, expands to Singapore
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Razorpay managing director and co-founder Shashank Kumar (left) and South-east Asia head of its Singapore company Angad Dhindsa.
PHOTO: RAZORPAY
SINGAPORE – Indian fintech firm Razorpay Software has earmarked group profitability as a key milestone on the road to a stock market listing, which it intends to stage within the next three years.
The GIC-backed payments company is focused on becoming profitable on a consolidated basis across all its businesses, said Mr Shashank Kumar, co-founder and managing director of Razorpay, in an interview with Bloomberg.
“We’re two to three years away from an IPO,” he said.
However, no details were provided on whether the company intends to list in Singapore or elsewhere.
While its core payments segment is already profitable, Razorpay remains loss-making at the group level, with its neo-banking and lending services yet to break even.
Billion-dollar private technology start-ups – so-called unicorns – face a reckoning amid a slowing initial public offering market and a souring fund-raising market. Many are shifting their near-term focus to profitability.
Bengaluru-based Razorpay, last valued at US$7.5 billion (S$10 billion) in a 2021 funding round co-led by Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital Management and TCV, saw net income jump 360 per cent to 340 million rupees (S$5.2 million) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, helped by its mainstay payment gateway operations.
As part of plans to boost revenues, the company is expanding into other countries.
It launched in Singapore on March 7 and over the next few years will also explore roll-outs in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Middle East.
Razorpay wants to tap Singapore’s e-commerce market, which is expected to reach US$40 billion in the next three years, Mr Kumar said.
More broadly, e-commerce payments in South-east Asia are expected to more than double from 2022 to US$273.3 billion by 2027, according to a 2023 report by IDC.
Razorpay aims to capture US$5 billion in total payment volume from the region, with real-time payments in Singapore and cross-border payments being two focal points.
Its plans follow the 2024 unveiling of Project Nexus, a Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub project facilitating connections between the instant payment rails of Singapore, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand to facilitate low-cost cross-border payments.
Razorpay has raised US$741.5 million to date from backers, including Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Tiger Global Management, Peak XV, Salesforce Ventures and Y Combinator, it said in a statement. BLOOMBERG
