SaaS-based B2B fintech firm Perfios has emerged as a leader in its segment in both scale and capital raising. The company raised $100 million in total funding, including a $70 million Series C round in February 2022. In terms of scale, it managed over 88% growth in FY22
The operating revenue for the Bengaluru-based startup grew 88.1% to Rs 136.4 crore in FY22 while its losses contracted 62.1%, according to its consolidated financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies. Perfios offers a bundle of services to financial institutions including income analysis, fraud checks, verification, and automated customer onboarding. Income from these services was the only source of revenue for the firm with Warburg Pincus as a key investor. The firm claims to have over 500 million transactions categorized per month with 80 million API calls. It has 400 clients across 18 countries.
On the cost side, employee benefits expense formed 64.2% of the total cost which surged 52.5% to Rs 97.47 crore in FY22 from Rs 63.92 crore in FY21. It also includes Rs 1.19 crore in ESOP expenses (non-cash). Being a compliance maintenance and fraud check company, legal and professional costs became the second largest cost center for Perfios followed by the employee benefit cost. This cost grew by 18.3% to Rs 22.83 crore during the last fiscal year. It also spent another Rs 5.37 crore on rent which pushed Perfios’ overall expenditure by 39.9% to Rs 151.9 crore in FY22. Despite the almost 40% rise in expenses, the company managed to narrow losses by 62.1% to Rs 12.36 crore in FY22 from Rs 32.64 crore in FY21.
In FY22, Perfios’ ROCE and EBITDA margins increased to -1.67% and -5.24%, respectively. Perfios spent Re 1.11 to generate a single unit of operating revenue in the fiscal year ending March 2022. Perfios, which has a strong presence in the BFSI sector, offers a suite of tools and solutions that are well-suited to the evolving sector, which is seeing increased digitization and market expansion. The company appears to be well-positioned to deliver on profitability soon, with an IPO in 2-3 years on the horizon. Perfios majorly competes with Signzy, IDfy, Digio, and Hyperverge. In FY22, IDfy’s revenue increased by 50% to Rs 56.48 crore, but it increased by 2.5 times to Rs 18.72 crore. Signzy’s previous fiscal year came to an end.
