Chennai-headquartered fintech startup M2P Fintech has raised ₹850 crore in a Series D funding round led by private equity firm Helios Investment Partners in a mix of primary and secondary capital raise. The funding comes more than two years after its previous round, and values the start-up just short of the unicorn valuation at around ₹6,500 crore.

A few marquee banks in Asia and existing Investor Flourish Ventures also participated in the funding round, which saw the exit of a few early angel investors of the start-up. The founders continue to hold more than a third of the company even post the round. In 2022, the Tiger Global-backed start-up raised around $50 million from US-based Insight Partners and other investors and it was then valued at around ₹5,000 crore.

M2P aims to use the funds to strengthen its financial tech infrastructure products and for international expansion, specifically to expand its operations in Africa. On the product side, it intends to focus on leveraging Artificial Intelligence and to build data analytical capabilities in its core offerings to the financial sector.

GLOBAL EXPANSION

Unlike other start-ups that have not been able to crack exports, M2P has been on the path of global expansion in the last few years and already generates revenue South-East Asia, Middle East, and African markets.

“As of financial year 2024, we had around 40 per cent of our revenue from global markets and we expect this to go up to 60-70 per cent in the next few years,” Madhusudanan R, M2P Fintech CEO & Co-founder, said, told businessline. “Africa with its maturing financial ecosystem, growing smartphone penetration and financial inclusion efforts has a lot of parallels with India and presents a good potential for us,” he added. We recently acquired Goals101, a data analytics and intelligence platform, and our focus will be to further leverage it to offer data-centric personalisation solutions.

Founded by three friends Madhusudanan R, Muthukumar A, and Prabhu R, M2P Fintech started in 2014 as an API infrastructure company and has since then grown to be a financial tech company powering the digital stack of of banks, fintech, and other consumer technology companies. Their product powers core banking system, core lending suite, BNPL, Credit, Debit, & Prepaid cards, UPI and other products. It has a team of around 1,300 people with 50 per cent of the staff in Chennai. “We are exploring setting up smaller satellite offices across Tamil Nadu to tap talent beyond Chennai,” Madhusudanan said.

“Helios has a significant track record in growing fintech and financial services businesses on the continent, and this investment aligns with our strategy to invest in high-growth, tech-focused businesses.” Elias Yazbeck, Managing Director, Financial Services and Fintech at Helios Investment Partners, said, in a statement.

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