Razorpay Collaborates with Lightspeed and Peak XV to Finance and Guide B2B Startups

Nitin Konde, Varun Bhardwaj

Nov 14, 2024 — 3 min read

Razorpay Partners with Lightspeed, Peak XV to Fund B2B Startups

In partnership with venture capital firms Peak XV and Lightspeed, fintech company Razorpay announced the Razorpay Venture Investment Programme on November 13, 2024. The programme will invest in more than 50 early-stage business-to-business (B2B) enterprises.

Every year, the company and its venture capital partners will invest in ten to fifteen early-stage startups, offering B2B startups at different stages of development financial, technological, and leadership support. The initiative has the potential to raise up to $1 million for early-stage enterprises.

Based in Bengaluru, Razorpay is a business-to-business (B2B) omnichannel banking and payment platform. Over the next five years, India is expected to welcome an additional 10-15 unicorns in the B2B sector due to the rising interest in assisting entrepreneurs in this field, the business said in a statement.

Companies Benefiting from Razorpay’s Application Programming Interface

Razorpay's sandbox environments and API (Application Programming Interface) stack will be accessible to early-stage finance startups. This will cover product alliances, customer relationships, and introductions to the distribution network.

The company's founders and other members of the executive team will advise the entrepreneurs one-on-one. The programme for the entrepreneurs will be run by Vishnu Acharya, Razorpay's head of strategy and corporate development. According to Razorpay, the business-to-business market is still one of the most promising sectors with significant development potential. According to Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, the company hopes to facilitate this process with the Razorpay Venture Investment Programme by giving founders access to the appropriate technology, partnerships, and coaching to enable them to innovate and scale more quickly.

Startups Will Get Guidance from Around 3000 Founders

Razorpay intends to use the programme to provide one-on-one coaching from its founders and other executives, as well as to expand access to its API stack and integrate it with its tech platform. Additionally, startups will get access to the Razorpay Rize network, which consists of more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and companies.

Ishaan Mittal of Peak XV and Dev Khare of Lightspeed expressed excitement about the programme, pointing out that it has the ability to promote ideas aimed at SMEs by utilising Razorpay's payment infrastructure and wide-ranging SME network.

B2B Startups In India

The magnitude of India's mostly unorganised B2B industry and disjointed supply chain, according to a report by Bessemer Venture Partners, makes B2B markets extremely promising. B2B e-commerce made up only 1% of India's total B2B market in 2022, which is a sharp contrast to its very small share in 2019. The adoption of B2B e-commerce is expected to have a notable uptick, nevertheless, with estimates suggesting that by 2030, its proportion of the market would be just less than 5%.

Report further predicts that tech-enabled, online-first B2B marketplaces will offer an incredible $200 billion business opportunity by 2030. It's crucial to remember that, despite this tremendous development, online B2B gross merchandise value (GMV) would still only make up around 5% of all B2B transactions in India, which is far less than the penetration in other nations.