MobiKwik raised $50 million

MobiKwik, an online recharge, and mobile wallet declared that it has raised $50 million - Rs 332.6 crore - in series C funding led by GMO, a publicly listed Japanese internet company involved in payments among other things, and semiconductor firm MediaTek. The investment will be used for product innovation and to grow its team and user base as it ventures to take on Titan companies like Paytm and Snapdeal owned Freecharge.

BipinPreet Singh, founder & CEO at MobiKwik said, "MobiKwik is a dominating player in the Indian mobile payments space and continues its consistent growth trajectory while staying true to its DNA of rapid product innovation and capital efficiency. Our valuation too has significantly increased."

“We are very excited to live up to the investors’ expectations and raise the funding,” he further added.

The series C investment, completed last month also saw the support of current investors such as Sequoia Capital and Treeline Asia.

With a claimed base of 30 million users and 75,000 retailers - both online and offline- the company says its GMV run rate has grown by 250 per cent year-on-year for the past four years. Last year MobiKwik raised $31.6 million in two tranches as part of its Series B investment led by Sequoia Capital and Treeline, with participation from American Express and Cisco Investments.

MobiKwik was the first to launch W2W (wallet-to-wallet) mobile money transfer service in August 2014. Available on Android, Windows, and iOS, MobiKwik wallet services today has an online payment system where a user can store money to make mobile and DTH recharge, pay utility bills and shop using their wallets with over 50,000 merchants.

The company is aiming to reach 150 million users, annual GMV of $5 billion and 500,000 retailers in the future.

According to a report by India Brand Equity Foundation, the expanding E-commerce is expected to grow from $14 billion in 2015 to $220 billion in 2025. Owing to the limited number of bank account holders and credit card owners, the mobile wallet is the next logical option for making purchases at both offline and online stores.