PE: Perfios secures $80 million from an arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan

Transaction:

• Fintech-focused software-as-a-service firm Perfios secured $80 million in funding from Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG), a late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP).
• With the fresh investment, the Perfios becomes the second unicorn of 2024.

About Perfios:

• Founded in 2008, Perfios is a global B2B SaaS company serving the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance industry in 18 countries, empowering 1000+ financial institutions.
• Perfios extracts and analyses thousands of data types in real time to help financial institutions take lending decisions. It leverages its data platform and AI and machine learning to automate data driven decisions.
• Perfios has delivered 8.2 billion data points to banks and financial institutions every year to facilitate faster decisioning, and processes 1.7 billion transactions a year with an AUM of $36 billion.
• Company is headquartered in Bangalore, with offices worldwide and with 75+ products and platforms, and over 500+ APIs.

About TVG, arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP):

• Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG) focuses on late-stage venture and growth equity investments in cutting-edge technology companies worldwide.
• TVG is part of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’), a global investor with net assets of $247.5 billion as at December, 2023.

Rationale:

• Perfios said it plans to continue its expansion internationally in markets such as South-East Asia, Middle East and Africa. It will also use the funds towards inorganic growth opportunities.
• The investment will further help Perfios in strengthening the digital transformation journey of their partners, thereby powering financial inclusions and providing access to their financial services to billions across the globe.
• Perfios will also continue to invest in its comprehensive tech stack to power the end to end customer journeys across banking, insurance and embedded commerce.
• Bloomberg reported in January that the startup is considering an initial public offering to raise about $500 million in India at a potential valuation of $2 billion.

• ET reported on December 6 that Perfios is chalking out plans to enter the US and European markets in 2024. “There are our onboarding and decision-making capabilities being used in HR and ecommerce industries. These adjacent industries can be very significant opportunity, provided we focus on them,” Goswami had said.
• In a series D round, the company had raised $229 million from private equity investor Kedaara Capital through primary and secondary share sale in September 2023 at a valuation of $901 million.
• In a series C round, the company raised $70 million from Warburg Pincus, Bessemer Venture Partners and other investors in 2022. 
• In 2019, it had raised $50 million in a Series B round led by Warburg Pincus LLC and Bessemer Venture Partners.
• For TVG, the deal marks its second direct investment in India after it backed Pune-based logistics unicorn Xpressbees in November, and forms part of a broader strategy to invest $300 billion into “key strategic countries” by 2030.