February 8
Fintech unicorn Razorpay has expanded into South-East Asia with the acquisition of a majority stake in a Malaysian fintech firm Curlec, valuing the company between $19-20 million.
Razorpay expects to complete the full acquisition in the next one-and-a-half years. The Kuala Lumpur-based, Curlec builds solutions for recurring payments for businesses.
This marks Razorpay’s fourth acquisition overall and its first in the international markets.
“This acquisition will allow us to quickly ramp up and start scaling in Southeast Asia as a market. Curlec have been powering recurring payments for multiple companies in the Malaysia market. With them as part of this team, we will have a local team that understands the nuances of the market in Malaysia and Southeast Asia at large,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-founder, Razorpay.
Curlec was founded by Zac Liew and Steve Kucia in 2018. The company builds technology solutions on top of existing payments infrastructure, to make it easier for companies of all sizes, to collect recurring payments and take control of their cash flows.
Some of Curlec clients include insurance company AXA, fintech lending firm Funding Societies, and Axiata Digital to name a few. Initially backed by 500 Global and other investors, the company’s annual revenue has been growing at nearly five times since 2018.
More payment services
Malaysian shoppers are said to be more open to cross-border shopping, with 40 per cent of online transactions happening cross-border. And with the entry of new e-commerce consumers, Razorpay believes a broader range of payment services are required. The company is confident that an acquisition such as this will further unveil new channels for global business expansion for online businesses based in India and Malaysia
Liew, Co-Founder and CEO of Curlec said, “We are incredibly excited to be combining forces with Harshil, Shashank and the Razorpay team. We’ve long admired what they’ve built in India from afar and are fully aligned with a common vision of building payment and banking solutions from top to bottom, for any business. We look forward to the next phase of our journey and scaling together across Malaysia and Southeast Asia.”
Prior to this, Razorpay has acquired TERA Finlabs, (AI-based risk tech SaaS Platform) in 2021, Opfin (Payroll & HR management solution) in 2019 and Thirdwatch (Fraud Analytics AI-platform) in 2018. Razorpay was recently valued at $7.5 billion in its latest $375 million funding round co-led by Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital and TCV. Razorpay has raised a total of $741.5 million in funding since 2014.
The company claims to serve over 8 million businesses including the likes of Facebook, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred and has achieved $60 billion Total Payment Volume (TPV) as of early December 2021. Razorpay clocked over 300 per cent y-o-y growth and plans to achieve $90 billion TPV by the end of 2022.
Published on
February 08, 2022
