MSwipe a nine-year old point-of-sale startup reveals that it has broken even while denying a report that it is up for sale

• Mswipe founder Manish Patel said that the company has enough cash for at least 3 years.
• The company said it has achieved break even even before the lockdown began.
• Mumbai-based Mswipe had raked in ₹1.42 billion in revenue post demonetisation in the year 2016-17.

On Friday morning (April 24), a report said that Point-of-Sale startup Mswipe was looking for buyers as it had run out of cash. With the coronavirus pandemic, investors had predicted that many startups which don’t have a runway for at least a year will find it difficult to survive the recession.

But Mswipe has now denied the report and, in the process, revealed that the firm has already broken even. “Mswipe achieved company-wide cash breakeven before the COVID lockdown began, in March 2020. During this time period we also enjoyed robust growth of 50%+ YoY. The company is currently focused on building and pushing additional digital value-added services to its SMEs and is in the process of on-boarding top talent,” said Mswipe Founder and CEO Manish Patel.

The startup had also raised $30 million in a series-E round in April 2019 and planned to sign up 1.5 million merchants by the end of March 2020. The company today said that it has over 1.3 million merchants on its platform currently.

Not just that, the statement added that it has a “runway” for at least 3 years. “Even under a scenario where India is locked down for an entire year, Mswipe is in the enviable position of enjoying a comfortable runway of over 36 months. As such, we will continue to focus on our growth strategy, will soon be launching additional products that seek to further strengthen our leadership position in the SME focused market,” said Patel.

The inflection point came after six years in business

Founded in 2011, Mswipe was one of the startups that rode the demonetisaton wave. Mumbai-based Mswipe had raked in ₹1.42 billion in revenue post demonetisation in the year 2016-17. The Indian government’s ban on 86% of the currency notes in circulation in November 2016 was a huge blessing for firms like MSwipe as it pushed people to use digital payments.

The PoS business has seen great traction in India. Mswipe also sees competition from Paytm, Pine Labs and more. According to a RBI report from January 2020, PoS terminals from banks alone go up to 4.9 million in India, up from 3.6 million a year ago.

In July 2019, MSwipe had also launched an app store called Money Store which will house merchant-centric apps. This however is not restricted to payments, but will help digitize several other verticals of their businesses.

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