Instamojo plans to take its payments and commerce solutions products to international markets in the coming months, in particular to emerging markets neighbouring India including Southeast Asia and the Middle-East, the company's CEO and co-founder Akash Gehani told MediaNama in an interview. "Similar to how demonetisation pushed people into using digital payments, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for businesses to build an online presence," he said. Recently, Instamojo raised an undisclosed amount through a pre-series-C round from a clutch of Japanese investors, which Gehani says will help the company focus on building its product stack, increasing its user base, growing the team, in addition to expanding to emerging markets. "A part of the capital will be kept aside for the international expansion to emerging markets and over the coming few months we will finalise the plans," he said. For this year and the coming year, our focus is to build these tools for merchants and helping them come online, and in the beginning of this year we acquired GetMeAShop which was a very important piece for this play, Gehani added. MediaNama: How has the company adapted to the pandemic? Akash Gehani: In Phase 1, between March and April, transactions on the platform were impacted drastically, falling by 50%. From April to July [Phase 2], things bounced back and we saw transactions growing month on month by 30-40% and by the end of July we got back to the pre-COVID levels. And in Phase 3, business has continued to…
