BharatPe not raising capital now

New Delhi: Fintech platform BharatPe on Thursday refuted reports that its financial condition was hit owing to the Ashneer Grover saga, saying that it currently has $400 million in the bank with a monthly burn rate of nearly $4 million.

The company had $300 million in revenue at the end of FY22, and exited March with around $100 million in sales.

"We have no immediate plans to raise capital. We exited March at around $16 billion in annual total payment value (TPV) and aim to have payments TPV of $30 billion by March 2023," the company said.

Last week, the company's co-founder and former Managing Director Ashneer Grover took a dig at the board members of BharatPe over its first quarter of alleged 'degrowth' and 'maximum cash burn'.

The fintech platform had replied, saying it actually registered the strongest quarter (Q1 2022) ever in its history. The company said it registered four times growth in its overall revenue in the said quarter over the same period last year.

Catering to 225 cities (more than 2 times growth from last fiscal year), it has more than 8 million merchants in its platform (up from 5 million in FY21) and 3 lakh merchants have availed loans (up from 1.6 lakk in FY21).

"We have $4 billion in annualised TPV in payments through point of sale (POS). POS contributes about 25 per cent to the overall payments TPV of the company and 60 per cent merchants are the first-time POS users," BharatPe said.

"We aim to expand to 300 cities by the end of FY23 and expand the gold loan to 20 cities by the end of 2022. We target to be profitable and get listed in the next 18-24 months," the fintech platform added.

"Comparing month-on-month, all our metrics have grown at the fastest pace -- merchant total payments value (TPV) (17 per cent), consumer TPV (39 per cent), loans facilitated (31 per cent), and revenue (21 per cent) in March over February," it added.

Grover recently hit out at the board members of the fintech company, saying "snatching the keys and running a corner shop are two different skill-sets".

Last month, he was stripped of all company titles over alleged "extensive misappropriation of company funds" and using "company expense accounts" to "enrich themselves and fund their lavish lifestyles".

According to the company, they are tracking well to break even on its merchant business and would further strengthen its consumer business.