Pelocal has raised Rs 41.7 crore in its Series A funding round, led by UNLEASH Capital Partners and Unicorn India Ventures, with participation from several prominent angel investors. The company had earlier secured Rs 16.7 crore in seed funding in October 2024, also led by Unicorn India Ventures.
Pelocal operates an AI-powered payments orchestration platform that enables large enterprises to acquire, engage and collect from customers directly within WhatsApp. With more than 700 million active users in India, the platform integrates payments seamlessly into conversations, supporting use cases such as ticketing, collections, customer acquisition and customer service. Beyond this, Pelocal is also building technology infrastructure products tailored to BFSI enterprises.
Currently, the company serves over 40 large enterprises across the banking, financial services, insurance, transit and utilities sectors, reaching more than five million unique users every month.
Since its last funding round, Pelocal has achieved a six-fold increase in total payment value, operating today at an annualised payment run rate of over Rs 4,170 crore.
Vivekanand Tripathi, formerly CIO, Aegon Life and Max New York Life, Pelocal has expanded rapidly under his leadership alongside co-founder Vikas Garg, who brings over 15 years of corporate banking and FinTech experience.
With the latest funding, Pelocal plans to accelerate product development, expand its existing use cases and step up go-to-market initiatives, with the aim of reaching a Rs 83.5 crore annual revenue run rate within the next 18 to 24 months.
“Until now, digital communications have largely been limited to peer-to-peer messaging or one-way notifications. Our vision is to bring last-mile payments to the masses via WhatsApp by leveraging AI and advanced technologies,” said Tripathi, Founder and CEO of Pelocal.
“This fundraise enables us to execute that mission, and we’re thrilled to have the support of investors who share our conviction,” he added.
Vikas Garg, Co-founder, added, “With strong market demand and the backing of our investors, we’re committed to delivering world-class products at the intersection of payments, communication and enterprise technology.”
Backing the company’s mission, Natsuki Sugai, Managing Partner, UNLEASH Capital Partners, said, “Pelocal is redefining how enterprises interact and transact with customers by embedding payments into conversational interfaces like WhatsApp. With AI at its core, the company is solving a large-scale problem for Indian businesses and has the potential to scale globally.”
Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, also expressed confidence in the company’s growth trajectory, “We believed in Pelocal’s vision early on, and the company has delivered exceptional growth since our first investment. The surge in conversational commerce and embedded payment solutions presents a massive opportunity, and Pelocal is well-positioned to lead this transformation.”
Send news announcements/press releases to:
info@b2bmarketmedia.com
