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Financial technology firm BharatPe has seen its revenue and transaction volume jump manifold in FY21, as the pandemic has forced people and businesses adopt digital transactions and led fund-starved small businesses to seek more credit avenues.

The company gives small-ticket fully unsecured loans averaging at Rs 75,000 to merchant members. It disbursed Rs 1,600 crore in 2020-21 to 1.8 lakh merchant customers, rising from Rs 150 crore in 2019-20, BharatPe Group President Suhail Sameer told PTI on Thursday.

This helped the startup net 7X growth in revenue to more than Rs 700 crore, up from around Rs 110 crore in 2019-20, Sameer said.

While the number of merchants jumped to 60 lakh in 2020-21 from 24 lakh in the previous year, transaction volume rose over four times to 10 crore a month or 120 crore annually from 2.7 crore a month in FY20, he said.

The transaction value touched around Rs 5,800 crore, he added.

“FY21 was a great year for us as the pandemic turned out to be a game-changer for the payments and financial services industry,” said Sameer, adding that this, along with the company’s entry into the credit business, helped it grow manifold.

The lending business, which started at the end of 2019, turned out to be the biggest game-changer for the company, Sameer said.

He added that the loan book has grown more than 10X to Rs 1,600 crore in small-ticket loans during 2020-21, up from Rs 150 crore in 2019-20.

The startup charges an interest rate of 1.5-2 percent per month for a period one to six months and a customer with good repayment history can get it even at 1.2 percent per month, he said.

He claimed that the company has one of the lowest bounce rates in the unsecured credit industry at four percent as against the industry average of over 20 percent.

“We plan to focus more on lending going forward as this is our revenue earner. We have set a target of disbursing over Rs 15,000 crore in FY22,” Sameer said.

It is also planning to enter 300 cities this year, growing from the current 100.

He said the company has set a target of more than doubling the number of merchants to 1.2-1.3 crore this fiscal and take it to three crore next fiscal, on the revenue rise.

BharatPe has so far raised $300 million in equity and debt from marquee investors such as Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo, and Sequoia Capital.

Of the $240 million equity funding, it has used only $60 million so far, Sameer said, indicating that it did not need capital now.

Our monthly cash burn is only $2.6 million, spent primarily on merchant acquisition, and this expense can easily be controlled, he said.