Indian payment gateway provider Razorpay announced its first international expansion into Southeast Asia with the acquisition of a majority stake in Curlec, a Malaysian payments firm.
Though the amount was not disclosed, Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay said that the valuation of Curlec was roughly around US$ 20 million.
Razorpay said that it is confident that this acquisition will further unveil new channels for global business expansion for online businesses based in India and Malaysia.
Curlec currently works with hundreds of businesses across Malaysia with notable names including insurance company AXA, Southeast Asian SME digital financing platform Funding Societies, and Axiata Digital to name a few.
Initially backed by 500 Global and other investors, Curlec reported that its annual revenue has grown by nearly 5X since 2018.
This marks Razorpay’s fourth acquisition overall and its first internationally.
Prior to this, Razorpay acquired TERA Finlabs, an AI-based risk tech SaaS Platform in 2021, Opfin, a payroll and HR management solution in 2019, as well as Thirdwatch, a fraud analytics platform in 2018.
Commenting on Razorpay’s first international expansion, Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay said,
“With Curlec coming onboard, we at Razorpay are really excited as we mark our first step towards expanding in the South East Asia region.
With the vast experience in a heterogenous market like India over the last seven years, our expansion to the Southeast Asia payments market is timed exactly to coincide with the company’s growing dominance in all things payments.”
Zac Liew, Co-founder and CEO of Curlec said,
“We are incredibly excited to be combining forces with Harshil, Shashank and the Razorpay team.
We look forward to the next phase of our journey and scaling together across Malaysia and Southeast Asia.”
