Grover’s QR-code payments startup BharatPe is all-in on lending to small businesses, but elusive regulatory permissions and management churn are stumbling blocks.
We intend to create a loan book of more than Rs 5,000 crore as of March 2023 for our partner NBFCs,” writes BharatPe co-founder and CEO Ashneer Grover, in response to our queries on the payments company’s digital lending goals.
There is no shortage of ambitious startups targeting all kinds of financial services in India today. From Walmart-owned mobile payments company PhonePe to credit card billing and rewards service CRED to Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal’s (potentially) banking-to-insurance company Navi. BharatPe, less than three years old, is right up there with the biggest of them.
Launched in mid-2018, the company offered …
Arti is a former writer at The Morning Context. She previously worked with publications such as ET Prime, VCCircle, Firstpost and EETimes. Arti has keenly tracked the evolution of financial technology in India and written some of the defining pieces on the ecosystem as it birthed and matured. Even when not writing about it, she loves to dissect the revenue models, margins and regulations that are shaping the sector.
artisingh@mailtmc.com