India’s leading fintech platform PhonePe has acquired buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) fintech startup ZestMoney, according to a livemint report quoting people aware of the matter. However, the financial details of the deal are not known yet.
“The acquisition is done. ZestMoney will continue to operates as a separate entity with Zest brand,” the livemint report quoted a person aware of the matter as saying.
According to the report, ZestMoney was earlier in acquisition talks with Pine Labs and BharatPe, but the deals fell through.
ZestMoney is a consumer lending fintech company in India founded by Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma and Ashish Anantharaman in 2015. It is backed by investors like Australia’s Zip, Goldman Sachs, Quona Capital, Xiaomi and Alteria Capital. The company had last raised $50 million in September 2021
PhonePe is already there in mutual fund distribution, insurance, digital gold and silver. It was, however, yet to introduce lending through its platform. In fact, its rivals Paytm and BharatPe have been in the lending space through both, merchant and consumer lending.
PhonePe has acquired GigIndia, WealthDesk, OpenQ and closed the long-pending acquisition of IndusOS in the past year.
As per filings accessed through Tofler, ZestMoney’s loss in FY22 surged 216 percent to Rs 398 crore from Rs 125.8 crore in previous fiscal year. Revenues grew by 62 percent from Rs 89.3 crore in FY21 to Rs 145 crore in FY22.
Read all the Latest Business News here