Payment gateway Razorpay has bagged $375 million from a clutch of investors in one of its largest fundraises till date, taking its valuation to $7.5 billion, an over 2X jump from the last $3 billion valuation. According to an official statement, this Series F round is also one of the fastest increases in valuation for an Indian unicorn this year. Razorpay was valued at $1 billion in October 2020 and $3 billion in April 2021. With the Series-F round, the fintech major has raised a total of $740 million in investments since its inception in 2014. Co-led by Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital and TCV, the Series-F fundraise also received participation from existing investors like Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, GIC and Y Combinator. These funds raised will be invested in building a full-stack financial solutions company, solving for all payment and banking needs of businesses on one platform. The company plans to use the funds to further scale up its Business Banking Suite, RazorpayX and offer new banking solutions in 2022 that will help businesses focus less on handling compliance & operations and more on growth. The financial solutions company also plans to invest in new acquisitions in 2022 and expand its presence across the globe, starting with the Southeast Asian countries. The fintech unicorn plans to hire over 600 employees to fuel these growth plans in India and overseas. The payments major recently announced new initiatives for the 63 million medium, small and micro enterprises of India to help their customers checkout faster with minimum clicks, a platform for efficient tax payments as well as plans to invest and support in startups. “It’s an exciting time of change we’re living in. We’ve come a long way in these seven years, and more so since 2020, and I’m filled with immense gratitude for the company to have travelled thus far. Throughout this journey, we’re humbled and excited to have had the opportunity and trust of 8Mn partner businesses. And now moving forward, we believe we will radically change how payments and banking is done in nearly every sector of India,” Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-Founder of Razorpay said. “While these freshly infused funds will be used in multiple areas, the most important one will be towards investing in building intelligent technologies that will make the lives of small businesses easier by providing them a fundamentally different experience and reducing complexity. We want them to spend less time managing compliance and operations and invest more time in creating new products, building on new ideas and thinking scale. It’s great to know that our investors across the globe have continued to put their trust in this mission. This investment will help us take financial services up a notch and serve the underserved businesses and continue to build the central nervous system of Digital India,” he added. The Bengaluru-headquartered company claims that it is currently supporting over 25,000 Indian businesses to manage their money. Apart from product expansion of RazorpayX, the company is also looking at global expansion. Geographies like Southeast Asian (SEA) countries face similar payment problems like India and Razorpay will look to leverage its leadership in building intelligent payment products and learnings to ripe markets like SEA countries. “Over the last seven years, we’ve tirelessly worked towards making Razorpay a technology and product company which is people-first. If there is one thing the Razorpay team has committed to doing since 2014, it is to never stop reinventing. We want to create new products and build experiences that will change the lives of millions of businesses and consumers. Over the years, the feedback we’ve received from partner businesses has been quite encouraging and assured us that we’re on the right track. With the funds raised, we want to continue delivering a payment and banking experience that businesses will take advantage of and worry less,” Shashank Kumar, CTO and Co-Founder, Razorpay said “The growth of Razorpay is a testament to the enormous fintech adoption the country has witnessed. We at Razorpay are all set to create a larger dent in the fintech universe and with the help of new acquisitions and partnerships we will be able to build an A-class financial service infrastructure for India’s businesses,” Kumar said. Of the 42 companies that were crowned unicorns in 2021 alone, Razorpay powers payments for 34 of them. Razorpay has achieved $60 billion TPV (total payment volume) as of early December 2021. The company plans to achieve $90 billion TPV by the end of 2022. The company clocked over 300 per cent YoY growth, second year in a row.