Fintech startup IndiaLends.com has raised $4 million in Series A funding from American Express Ventures, existing investors DSG Consumer Partners, Chinese investment firm Cyber Carrier VC and AdvantEdge Partners. The latest round of funding will be used by the company to expand its credit underwriting and analytics capabilities, offer more consumer-focussed products and increase its market footprint across India.
Started in March 2015 by ex-Capital One duo Gaurav Chopra and Mayank Kachhwaha, IndiaLends is a credit scoring and analytics platform focussed on disrupting the fragmented consumer lending market in the country. The company operates an online marketplace that allows consumers to shop for loan products, as well as access credit scores and financial education. It currently attracts over 140,000 visitors every month, and helps them to more quickly get access to cheaper credit. It also provides credit scoring solutions to financial institutions to help them increase their lending footprint.
“IndiaLends’ platform is helping to connect lenders and borrowers in India more efficiently by providing a user-friendly experience for consumers and leveraging a broader set of data than has traditionally been available to financial institutions in the market,” said Rohit Bodas, Partner at American Express Ventures. “We are pleased to support IndiaLends’ efforts to help consumers find credit solutions that meet their individual needs.”
“We have witnessed strong traction in the past year with our loan volumes growing 100% quarter-on-quarter,” said Chopra. “We have partnered with over 30 banks and Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and now offer bespoke lending products in segments that have been historically underserved. The superior quality and quantity of data is helping financial institutions underwrite more and more of our customers. This new round of funding not only gives us the capital to scale exponentially but also provides us access to resources and learnings from developed fin-tech markets such as the U.S. and China.”
“Over the course of last year, we’ve made significant improvements in our data, analytics and technology capabilities. We’re now looking to build on this and have recently introduced products like credit builder loans for first-time borrowers, in partnership with select Banks and NBFCs,” said Kachhwaha, who is a part of the Forbes India ‘30 Under 30’ list. “We’re poised to provide affordable financial products to customers who would otherwise borrow from money lenders or payday companies at prohibitively high rates.”
IndiaLends’ strong product portfolio and experienced team of over 100 data scientists, technologists, marketers, and customer reps, has attracted interest from global institutional investors, including China’s Cyber Carrier VC. “We are committed to working with entrepreneurs that are solving some of the toughest problems in Consumer Finance, such as inadequate access to financial products, low financial literacy and poor lending processes. We are thrilled to partner with IndiaLends, which has extensive experience in consumer finance, tech, and data science and can lead the Fin-Tech revolution, aimed at overcoming these challenges worldwide,” said Jessica Wong, Managing Director, Cyber Carrier VC.
IndiaLends will continue to strengthen its proposition for customers and financial institutions by investing in its superior data analytics capabilities, which allow it to better assess customer segments that currently do not meet traditional scoring parameters.
IndiaLends was previously funded by DSG Consumer Partners and individual investors Siddharth Parekh and Gautham Radhakrishnan. “We continue to support IndiaLends in its endeavour to provide financial institutions with technology and risk-assessment capabilities that will help them lend to consumers at scale. The company’s track record and strong financial and business fundamentals, along with its team’s ability to create products that have high product-market fit has increased our faith in their vision and execution capabilities.” said Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director, DSG Consumer Partners.
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