Carta, Inc. vs Razorpay: Strategic Comparison

This in-depth comparison examines Carta, Inc. and Razorpay across revenue, market value, business model, competitive positioning, and long-term growth strategy. Whether you are researching Carta, Inc. on its own, evaluating Razorpay, or weighing the two companies side by side, the breakdown below highlights where each company leads and where the gap between Carta, Inc. and Razorpay is widest.

On the headline numbers, annual revenue is $442.0M (unaudited) (FY2024) for Carta, Inc. and ~$438.8M (FY2025) for Razorpay, while their respective market capitalizations stand at N/A and N/A. Carta, Inc. is headquartered in United States and Razorpay in India, and those different home markets shape how each company competes.

Carta, Inc.: Carta is the system of record for who owns what in private companies and funds. Founders use it to issue options and model funding rounds, employees use it to see and exercise their equity, and VC, PE, and private credit managers use it to run fund accounting and LP reporting. That position between companies and investors is what lets Carta sell valuations, fund administration, and legal services. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Razorpay: Razorpay is often described as the Stripe of India. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Bengaluru, it lets businesses accept payments online and in store, pay vendors and staff, and borrow against their sales. It is authorised by the RBI as a payment aggregator and became a public limited company, Razorpay Software Limited, in 2025 ahead of a planned IPO. The company is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Razorpay was founded in 2014 in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, by IIT Roorkee alumni Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, becoming the first Indian fintech accepted into Y Combinator before building India’s premier full-stack payments and neo-banking platform.

Carta, Inc. and Razorpay pursue distinct approaches to generating revenue, and understanding how each company operates is the foundation of any fair comparison between Carta, Inc. and Razorpay.

Carta, Inc. business model: Carta sells annual software subscriptions plus service fees on both sides of the private market. Companies pay for cap table management, equity plan administration, and 409A valuations, with prices rising as stakeholder counts and funding stages grow. Investment firms pay for Fund ERP products: fund administration (software plus dedicated fund accountants), fund tax and K-1s, portfolio valuations, CRM, forecasting, and loan operations for private credit. Since May 2026, Carta Law adds outcome-based legal and compliance work such as NDAs, KYC, investor onboarding, and LP transfers. Sacra estimates that in 2023 cap tables and 409A valuations made up about 67% of ARR, fund administration about 27%, and private equity products about 5%. Carta shut its secondary trading business in January 2024, so brokerage is no longer part of the model.

Razorpay business model: Razorpay earns most of its money from transaction fees. Merchants on its payment gateway pay a merchant discount rate on each successful payment (standard published pricing is 2% for most domestic cards, net banking and wallets, with consumer UPI largely at zero MDR under Indian rules). On top of that it sells RazorpayX business banking and payouts, RazorpayX Payroll subscriptions, Razorpay POS terminal rentals plus in-store acquiring fees, and Razorpay Capital credit through lending partners. Because gateway margins are thin after bank and network costs, gross profit (~$148 million (₹1,277 crore) in FY25 on ~$439 million (₹3,783 crore) revenue) is the better gauge of the business than headline revenue.

The durability of a company's moat often decides long-term winners. Here is how the competitive advantages of Carta, Inc. stack up against those of Razorpay.

Carta, Inc. competitive advantage: Carta's main advantage is its two-sided network. Startups put investors on their Carta cap tables, investors adopt Carta for fund administration, and those funds steer portfolio companies to Carta. As a registered transfer agent holding the legal record of ownership, Carta is also costly to leave: switching means migrating years of grants, vesting schedules, and investor records. Its cap table data feeds 409A valuations, compensation benchmarks, and portfolio valuations for funds.

Razorpay competitive advantage: Razorpay's edge is developer adoption. Clean APIs, SDKs, plugins for Shopify and WooCommerce, and fast digital onboarding made it a default gateway for Indian startups, and that installed base lets it cross-sell payouts, payroll, POS and credit to merchants who already route money through it.

Future prospects matter as much as current results. The growth strategies below explain how Carta, Inc. and Razorpay each plan to expand from here.

Carta, Inc. growth strategy: Carta grows by selling more products to the firms already on its ledger. The playbook is to take a professional service (409A valuations, fund accounting, legal work), automate it, and tie the output to Carta's system of record. Fund ERP bundles fund administration, fund tax, portfolio valuations, data collection, forecasting, and CRM. Acquisitions fill gaps: Tactyc (fund forecasting), Sirvatus (private credit loan operations, October 2025), Accelex (AI data extraction, October 2025), ListAlpha (CRM), and Avantia (legal and compliance, May 2026).

Razorpay growth strategy: Razorpay's strategy is to widen beyond online checkout. The 2022 Ezetap deal took it into offline POS; RazorpayX extends it into payouts, current accounts and payroll; Razorpay Capital uses merchant transaction data for credit; and Curlec gives it a base in Malaysia. Domestically, moving its holding company to India in 2025 cleared the way for a local stock market listing.

A closer look at the financial trajectory of Carta, Inc. and Razorpay rounds out the comparison.

Carta, Inc.: Carta does not publish audited financials. Henry Ward has said the company was approaching $500 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025. Sacra estimates revenue of about $373 million in 2023, $442 million in 2024 (+19%), and $515 million in 2025 (+16.5%), with growth slowing after the end of zero-rate venture funding. Carta raised its last primary round, a $500 million Series G led by Silver Lake and Lightspeed, at a $7.4 billion valuation in August 2021; a January 2022 employee secondary sale reportedly priced it at $8.5 billion. Total equity funding is roughly $1 billion.

Razorpay: Razorpay's FY25 consolidated revenue from operations was ~$439 million (₹3,783 crore), up 65% from ~$266 million (₹2,296 crore) in FY24. Gross profit rose 41% to ~$148 million (₹1,277 crore). The company reported a ~$140 million (₹1,209 crore) net loss, which it attributed to ESOP expenses and one-time costs of redomiciling to India (press reports put the reverse-flip tax at about $144 million (₹1,245 crore)). It has raised roughly $741 million from investors including GIC, Peak XV Partners, Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India) and Tiger Global; its last priced round valued it at $7.5 billion in 2021, while June 2026 reports put its IPO valuation target at $5-6 billion.