Tiger Global backed Razorpay to up workforce 50% by Dec

Online payment gateway service provider Razorpay on Friday said it plans to increase the headcount of its current base of 1,300 employees by 50% within December 2021.

The Bengaluru-based company added it hired a total of 550 employees in 2020, and looks forward to welcoming 650 more workers in the current calendar year, across roles in engineering, product, customer experience, sales and marketing teams.

The company witnessed an 80% increase in the demand for digital payments and the need for digital financial processes, as per a statement. The company recorded a 3X business growth in 2020, it added.

“Things have been drastically changing at Razorpay in the last few months. With the rising adoption of digital payments during Covid-19 and thousands of businesses going online for the first time, there's a lot of scope for interesting innovations in business payments now, something that Razorpay employees have been actively working on,” Chitbhanu Nagri, senior vice president of the company’s people operations.

The B2B player now targets to service a total of 10 million businesses by 2022, Nagri added. It currently serves about 5 million businesses. Its neobanking arm, RazorpayX, serves over 10,000 businesses.

The startup’s clients include Facebook, Airtel, BookMyShow, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, and ICICI Prudential among others.

The company, through its annual Razorpay FTX event, announces new products and features. Recently, it launched an app store, insurance products, and a vernacular checkout page, among other new features.

In October 2020, it announced its most recent growth funding of $100 million in a round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and returning investor Sequoia Capital. The round set the startup’s entry into the club of unicorns, having valued it over $1 billion.

It has so far raised a total of 206.5 million.

Founded in 2014 by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Razorpay also provides short-term working capital and business loans through its platform Razorpay Capital.

Razorpay Software, which operates payments platform Razorpay, had registered a 164% increase in operating revenue to Rs 509 crore, in the financial year ended March, 2020. Total loss nearly doubled to Rs 6 crore, from Rs 3.2 crore a year ago.