BharatPe's merchant-QR bet turns profitable: ₹6 Cr PBT in FY25 after ₹342 Cr loss

BharatPe, founded in 2018, built its business on a simple wager: India's small merchants, the kirana shops and street vendors that still ran on cash, would take QR-code UPI payments if the onboarding was free and instant. By processing those daily transactions, BharatPe would collect data no bank had on this segment and use it to lend profitably.

The company grew fast — unicorn by 2021 — but 2022 brought a public founder dispute that ended with co-founder Ashneer Grover's exit and forced a full governance rebuild under CEO Nalin Negi. The rest of the story is the turnaround: cost cuts, consolidation of its NBFC arm Trillionloans, and final RBI authorization as an online payment aggregator in April 2025.

In FY25 (year ended March 2025), BharatPe reported its first adjusted profit before tax of ₹6 crore (excluding ESOP expenses), against a ₹342 crore loss in FY24. EBITDA excluding ESOP swung from a ₹209 crore loss to a ₹141 crore profit, and total revenue hit ₹1,734 crore, with revenue from operations growing at a 54% CAGR since FY22. UPI offline QR transactions grew 26% year on year.

The result marks the end of pure scaling: as of August 2025 the company remains private with no announced IPO, but it frames profitability as the foundation for new verticals — a third-party UPI app, an investment platform, and continued lending growth through Trillionloans.