Amritsar, NFA Post: Concluding its Series C equity round, digital lending startup KreditBee has secured an investment of $70 million follow-on investment from TPG-backed NewQuest and Motilal Oswal Private Equity.
KreditBee recently concluded its $75 million Series C equity funding from Premji Invest, Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund, Alpine Capital and Arkam Ventures consisting of both primary and secondary investment.
In a press release issued by MreditBee states that with the new
capital influx, the entity looks to scale up its lending portfolio beyond personal loans into other lending products, value-added services, deeper channel integrations and partnerships.
Solutions under evaluation include secured lending products, as well as the democratization of other auxiliary products and services around loans, like insurance and cards.
With this investment, KreditBee’s parent company Finnov has reduced its backing by China-based investors to around 10% from 40% earlier, The Economic Times reported quoting a source.
The report further stated that Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which is one of the existing investors in the company, has now made a complete exit, while other investors from China including Shunwei Capital, and Kuniun have reduced their holding in Finnov.
The current round of fundraising is expected to support the company in its effort to fuel financial inclusion and drive credit uptake in the economy especially for the unserved and underserved segment of the population, it said.
“With a larger portfolio of loan products, our objective is to provide credit to over 180 Million New-to-Credit customers who were not provided formal credit earlier,” Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of KreditBee said, adding that “This investment would help us take more positive steps towards achieving that.”
The company has previously raised over $43 million cumulatively in equity from marquee investors including ICICI Bank and Arkam Ventures.
Finnov, registered in March 2016, also holds Krazybee Services Private Limited – a systemically important non-deposit taking non-banking financial company registered with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) since May 2017.
The group launched its flagship brand KreditBee in May 2018, focused on full-stack digital lending for young professionals. The platform specializes in providing digital personal loans and consumer durable loans to both salaried and self-employed.
NewQuest Capital Partners Founding Partner Amit Gupta said the requirements of the average value-seeking middle class Indian can only be met by a multitude of lending products.
“One size doesn’t fit all. We are excited to become a shareholder of Finnov at this juncture and to support its next stage of development in offering innovative lending solutions to
the dynamic India market,” added Amit Gupta.
The capital infusion is largely focused on formalising credit delivery in India, according to Atul Gupta, partner at Premji Invest.
“We are impressed by the vision of KreditBee to formalise the path towards credit enablement for new-to-credit customers, their skilled team and responsible tech-enabled underwriting, and are pleased to partner with them in their next stage of growth,” Gupta said.
The company currently has over 1,200 employees and a user base of over 20 million with over 4 million credit customers.
Talking about the development, Motilal Oswal Private Equity CEO and MD Vishal Tulsyan remarked the company is keen on businesses that are scalable and yet built on sound unit economics, and KreditBee ticked all the boxes.
“With the sustained focus and momentum, we see the platform
becoming a mainstream Fintech Lending solution in the Asian market,” said Vishal Tulsyan.
The fintech platform plans to diversify its product offering by venturing into digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans and credit line, it said.
“The large scale at which the platform is able to disburse loans to customers showcases not just the stability and strength of its tech stack, but also a very appropriate credit scoring of customers using alternative data points, which forms a key for new-to-credit customers,” said Ashish Dave, Chief Executive Officer at Mirae Asset Venture Investments (India).
