Mobile payments start-up ftcash, which offers payment and lending options to small businesses, plans to hire around 500 tech and sales professionals in the next 18 months to ramp up its operations in the digital payment space. Of these, about 15 per cent will be software engineers and the rest will be across other verticals, said co-founder Deepak Kothari.

The company, which recently raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding from Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture fund 500 Startups and existing investor IvyCap Ventures, is also looking to close a $10-million funding in the next 4-6 months from Chinese and Sillicon Valley investors.

The funds will be used to ramp up operations in smaller cities, increase merchant base and upgrade technology to make it simpler for merchants to use. The company is also working to facilitate cross-border payments for offline merchants.

ftcash primarily serves micro-merchants, MSMEs, home-based entrepreneurs, mom-and-pop stores and large corporates with a merchant base. It facilitates both payments and loans for merchants and allows them to repay loans directly through the platform.

Kothari further told BusinessLine that the company is focussed on building solutions for offline merchants and that the largely undiscovered segment has huge potential with the government’s push to make India a cash-free economy in the next few years.

The PayPal-incubated firm founded in Mumbai in mid-2015 has a base of 25,000 merchants across Mumbai, Jaipur, Surat and Pune.

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