PayU, a leading financial services companies under the Prosus brand, has acquired PaySense for $185 million. Additionally, PayU will inject a total of up to $200 million in the new enterprise in the form of equity capital; $65 million of the total amount will be immediately invested, while the balance will be infused in the next 24 months to grow the loan book.
Founded in 2015 and based out of Mumbai, Paysense is a venture backed, financial services startup. It boasts of over 5.5 million customers and had raised $25.6 million prior to this announcement, with PayU already participating in the fintech’s Series B funding round in 2018.
PayU is planning to merge its consumer lending business LazyPay with Paysense to build a full-stack digital lending platform in India.
With operations across 18 growth markets across Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, PayU enables billions of people to buy and sell online.
“Technology has the power to completely transform people’s access to financial services and the credit market in India is ripe for further digital disruption. This merger is the next step in our journey as we accelerate our vision for credit in India. We’re delighted to welcome Prashanth and his experienced team as we integrate this fast-growing business and build a full-stack digital lending platform aligned with PayU’s overall plan of orchestrating a broader fintech ecosystem in the region,” Siddhartha Jajodia, Global Head of Credit, PayU, said.
Sayali Karanjkar, Co-founder, PaySense said, “We continue to witness the massively untapped market potential for short-term collateral-free loans among the digitally savvy aspirational youth. Our endeavor is to facilitate easy digital credit options for this new-to-credit segment and support their ambitions. Both PayU and PaySense believe in leveraging the enormous potential of technology to unlock credit and financial services for vastly underserved consumers in India and this merger reflects our allied vision of delivering financial freedom to all.”
As a part of the deal, Prashanth Ranganathan, currently PaySense CEO will lead PayU’s credit business in India as the CEO of the new enterprise. Prashanth will continue to retain a stake in the merged enterprise, while all the other investors and shareholders will exit.
Owned by South African based Naspers, Prosus is a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world.
