UK's fintech Revolut to launch India operations in second half of 2022

London-headquartered fintech player Revolut is working on a long-term plan in India and has will hire close to 300 employees by the end of 2022.

In an interview the CEO of Revolut India said the company plans to begin with payments by offering cross-border remittances, followed by trading and investments.

"Post that we will evolve into offering credit for both businesses and individuals. Once we have managed to make a meaningful presence in payments, investments, and credit, then that's a logical step to take a leap forward into forming a full-fledged digital bank," Chatterjee said.

Revolut has been expanding beyond the United Kingdom and the United States markets and secured an $800-million funding led by Tiger Global and SoftBank in July last year, which valued the startup at $33 billion.

Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, the company provides a wide range of financial services globally including payments, transfers, investment and trading, payment gateways for businesses, digital banking, debit cards, among others.

For the Indian market, the company has committed an initial investment of a little over $45 million (approx Rs 340 crore).

"The $800-million funding was to fuel Revolut's global expansion strategy. So pretty much the money is on-tap, and the $45 million is the initial round. We have the assurance that as we need money it will be available and Revolut is definitely committed to being in India for the long run," Chatterjee said.

The company has already started work on building a product and engineering hub in India, which will be the first outside of the UK. The hub will also be serving the company's markets around India, mainly in South East Asia.