Razorpay wins Y Combinator backing

plant growing out of pile of coins in a person's hand

Razorpay is only the second Indian company to be selected for mentoring by Y Combinator, which has made a $120,000 investment in the payments startup as part of its three month accelerator programme in Silicon Valley.

The Indian company is building a platform to make it easier for smaller Indian business and organisations to accept online payments. With Razorpay’s APIs, companies can add options for debit or credit card payments, or bank account transfers, using just a few lines of code.

Co-founders Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur hope to simplify India’s difficult online payments industry, which is mired in red tape and paperwork. Businesses looking to add online payments are often dealt with region by region, which only adds to the wait time. Other larger payment gateways such as Stripe are yet to enter the market, while PayPal has slowed its activity in India after the RBI forced users to transfer funds held in the wallet to an Indian bank account after seven days. Card penetration is also far below saturation point.

While Razorpay’s solution is going live in California, it was built in India, and the company’s co-founders intend to set their company up in Bangalore after the YC programme ends.

India’s online payments volume is doubling every two years, and is on track to be the third largest market for payments after the US and China, Y Combinator partner Kat Manalac told TechCrunch.

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