Rupeelend: Runs A Loyalty Program Rewarding Good Customers With Discount Rates & Longer Tenures

BWDisrupt interacted with Mr. Siddharth Ravindran, CEO, Rupeelend.com

Start Up Journey:
The seed of the idea was sown way back in 2013 when I had to go through a difficult medical emergency time. I could not get over the thought that I didn’t have enough savings or if I didn’t have any medical insurance what would my (family’s) situation would have been. I have been observing people who need last minute loans but due to the lengthy process, they had to succumb to losses.

Rupeelend website was launched on 15th August 2015.

About Rupeelend- Features & Services:
In India, banks traditionally give loans in 7 - 10 days to new customers.
We started this product to bridge the GAP between the loan needed to bank funding a loan and we are the first company in India to give loans in 2 hours to new customers and 10 minutes for a repeat customer and also to those who are going through a month-end crisis.

We are a pure fintech company where we are dependent on our cloud based systems for customer acquisition, inside sales, customer experience management and achieving operational excellence with the help of tech enabled processes. Our customer acquisition is also 100 % online + all verifications are done online. We have AI driven decision making systems. We use multiple algorithms to understand a customer’s social quotient, future repaying capacity with profile’s risk determination and predictive analysis for judging the life cycle so that we have a long term association with the customer.

We fund customers with or without credit scores on the basis of multiple algorithms to understand a customer’s social lifestyle quotient, future repaying capacity with profile’s risk determination and predictive analysis for judging the life cycle so that we have a long term association with the customer. This helps people with very poor CIBIL scores too avail loan facilities for whom other financial institutions had already rejected the application. It helps us building trust among the people thus being their long term partner.

We have built the 1st of its kind AI driven RLP system which will help customers share the risk with their family and friends. It will act as the insurance in cases of inability to repay. This system automatically adjusts itself with the day to day advancement in the person’s network and the variety of customer profile we are interacting with.

Challenges:
When I started, the entire community was skeptical about the rate of interest that I had thought of and everyone was keener on luring customers with lucrative offers. But we followed the old school methodology and sailed through the initial rough times.

Now looking at the entire market, I feel we did the right thing. It had been a great moral booster and is the catalyst which helps us propelled towards our long term vision of financial inclusion for all.

Footprints:
We have disbursed more than 3Cr of Short Term Credit in the last 12 months while operating in Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore. We intend to expand into Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata with the next round of funding. We have 50 plus staff comprising of all the 3 locations.

Business Goals:
New product lines wherein we can tap in to people with higher ticket size requirements that will be a 50k to 10 lac loan with a tenure from 2 months to 2 years. Many of our existing returning customers have been frequently asking about the same so we are working full-fledged to make this offering available asap. We are building a loyalty program by rewarding our good customers with discounts on rates and longer tenures and in addition engaging and educating our customers in an effective financial learning for always maintaining a creditable credit score.

We are also launching a platform for MSME and common individuals which will help them with financial management (both day to day and long term). It will have a recommendation engine which will help them improve savings and be self reliable to take care of emergency situations. We will be building an AI chatbot which will be 24*7 active for assisting the users with their finance related queries. The tool will focus on assisting with different modes of enhanced cash savings. We will help customers in improving their CIBIL scores with the help of our guided tutorials. Also it will guide them with the planning for big household purchases i.e. when should they hold their purchases or help them in budget saving so that they can fulfill some purchase decision later.