Sequoia and Tiger Global-backed fintech unicorn BharatPe has elevated chief financial officer Nalin Negi to the role of chief executive officer.
An alumnus of Delhi University, Negi has over 28 years of experience in building and scaling businesses in the fintech and banking domains. Prior to joining BharatPe, Negi held several senior leadership positions at financial services organisations including SBI Cards and GE Capital, where he played instrumental roles in driving profitability, strategic partnerships with businesses and steering SBI Cards’ public listing.
“BharatPe was started with the vision of helping millions of offline merchants and MSMEs across the country, with fintech products. Going forward, our strategic focus will be on sustained profitability, scaling lending businesses, and launching new merchant-centric products,” said Negi, chief executive officer, BharatPe.
Having joined BharatPe in 2022, Negi was responsible for reducing the losses clocked by BharatPe, as in FY23 the startup incurred a loss of Rs 926 crore after tax, nearly 5x lesser than FY22, wherein the startup’s losses amounted to nearly Rs 5,600 crore, according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle.
The startup also saw its revenue jump by more than 2 times as its FY23 revenue stood at Rs 1,028 crore in contrast to Rs 456 crore in FY22.
Founded in 2018, BharatPe began by launching the first interoperable UPI code and now also offers card acceptance terminal – BharatSwipe. It serves more than 1.3 crore merchants across 450 cities and has facilitated the disbursement of loans totaling close to Rs 14,600 crore.
The fintech player also entered the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) segment with the launch of postpe in October 2021. In the same month, BharatPe consortium with Centrum Financial Services also received a license from the Reserve Bank of India to run a Small Finance Bank (SFB).
In 2023, the startup acquired 51% of stake in Mumbai-based non-bank lender Trillion Loans.
