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Mobile payments startup Ftcash 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 would be software engineers and the rest would be across other verticals, said its co-founder Deepak Kothari.
The company, which 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 Silicon Valley investors. The funds would be used in ramping up the operations in smaller cities, increase merchant base, and upgrading the technology to make it simpler for merchants to use. The company is also working to facilitate cross border payments for offline merchants.
The company primarily serves micro-merchants, MSMEs, home-based entrepreneurs, mom and pop stores and large corporates with a merchant base. ftcash 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 focused on building solutions for the offling merchants and that the segment is largely undiscovered at this moment but has a huge potential with government’s push to make India a cashfree economy in the next few years.
“We are a zero device, omnichannel payment platform for micro-merchants and small businesses and facilitate transactions only using a bank account and a feature phone. Only 2.5 million merchants have PoS devices and getting these devices is also not very easy for the small merchants hence we are offering solutions where they can transact without the need of having a PoS device. Our aim is to reach out to 1 million merchants over the next 4 years,” Kothari added.
The PayPal incubated company started in Mumbai in mid-2015 and already has a base of 25,000 merchants across cities like Mumbai, Jaipur, Surat and Pune.
The start-up is also developing products in the payment and loan categories, scaling annual transactions, and disbursing loans from Rs 150 crore to Rs 1,500 crores to merchants. It uses all payment methods including credit/debit cards, net banking, various mobile wallets, UPI and PayPal to create an open architecture-based platform for merchants to initiate digital payments.
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