Mumbai, NFAPost: FlexiLoans.com, India’s leading MSME-focused fintech lending company announced it has attracted nearly $90 million in Series B funding from marquee investors including Denmark based PE firm MAJ Invest, UK based fintech investor Fasanara Capital and the family offices of Dr. Harry Banga and Yogesh Mahansaria along with many existing shareholders such as Mr. Sanjay Nayar.
This investment round provides a strong runway to the firm for its growth journey at a time when there is a fintech push by the government, especially for the MSME sector. This investment marks Fasanara Capital’s first SME fintech investment in India and MAJ Invest’s 3rd investment this year. MAJ Invest and Fasanara Capital have been investing in several prominent Fintechs and Non-Bank Financial Companies globally.
The capital raised will fuel FlexiLoans’s growth ambitions as it plans to focus on technology development and more than double its MSME book via its Co-lending, BNPL and Supply Chain Finance platforms. Having built technology assets for platform lending, pricing, and customer journeys it will continue to invest in cutting edge technology to strengthen its customer journey automation, risk management & analytics capabilities.
In its efforts to fuel “Atmanirbhar Bharat” growth, FlexiLoans.com provides ‘Loans at a Click’ to small businesses and has disbursed over INR 1,700+ Crs (USD 220mn) to MSMEs across across 1,600+ cities through 100% digital originations and zero branches.
Commenting on the investment, MAJ Invest Partner David Paradiso said MAJ Invest is impressed with FlexiLoans’ vision, strong management team and solid technology platform for driving financial access to deserving Micro SMEs.
“Indian MSMEs are increasingly adopting digital tools and FlexiLoans’ technology and data science assets are a perfect match to seize this opportunity to deepen financial access where its most needed,” said MAJ Invest Partner David Paradiso.
Fasanara Capital CEO Francesco Filia said India is a strong market for MSME financing and delighted to partner with FlexiLoans, which is amongst the pioneers in the digital MSME lending space in India and shares a similar commitment to Fasanara’s to reduce the financing gap for MSMEs.
“Embedded financing to merchants in the ecommerce ecosystem is a sweet spot that we invest in across the world and FlexiLoans.com has a strong product led partnerships in India for the same,” said Francesco Filia
Sorin Investment Founder Sanjay Nayar said the FlexiLoans team has grown the business with the right principles of quality credit underwriting, granular customer sourcing via strong partnerships and top notch technology infrastructure.
“We are excited to back them again for their next and important leg of transition to a leading digital lender with an eventual path to digital banking in the future,” said Sorin Investment Founder Sanjay Nayar.
FlexiLoans.com had previously raised ~$20 million in India’s largest seed funding and Series A investment led by Sanjay Nayar and marquee bankers.
The firm is currently one of the largest embedded finance players in India with more than 120 eco-system partners including e-commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, Myntra, and others for financing sellers/vendors associated with these platforms.
Speaking on the Series B funding round, Flexiloans.com Cofounder Deepak Jain said Flexiloans is very excited to have institutional players MAJ Invest, Fasanara Capital and the Banga and Mahansaria family offices join in the company’s mission to help small businesses grow in India.
“Their experience in developing global fintech companies will help us in creating better products as well as organizational building. We are grateful that most of our existing investors also backed us in this round demonstrating their continuous faith in the platform. This round is particularly special because our investors now include long-term institutional investors, seasoned bankers and some of the largest global family offices – ingredients to build a world-class company backed by the right values,” said Flexiloans.com Cofounder Deepak Jain.
The company disburses over Rs 100 crore ($14 million) monthly and plans to double this run rate over the next year, with its co-lending platform contributing a significant share of growth. FlexiLoans.com is amongst the most visited SME Fintech websites digitally attracting more than 1,00,000 monthly applications and has a massive organic reach with MSMEs in Tier II and Tier III towns pan India.
The company has built one of India’s most comprehensive co-lending platforms – Bi-frost with its unique end-to-end digital sourcing, underwriting, and servicing technology which contributed to 70% of its growth for the past year. It has also scaled its supply chain solutions 5X in FY 22 with a unique blend of vendor financing, dealer financing and BNPL for MSMEs deeply embedded in multiple large platforms.
Asia Link Advisors and Axis Capital were as advisors for the fund raise.
FlexiLoans Key Highlights:
Access to 10 Mn+ SMEs via 50+ Partners such as Flipkart, Amazon, Pine Labs, MSwipe, Cloudtail
Over 9 Mn+ Lifetime Web Customers with the App having 700k+ downloads
53% of Loans are to SMEs borrowing their first Business loan ever
47% of Loans are in Tier II and Tier III towns
25% of Loans are to Female Entrepreneurs
Rs 12 bn (~$160 million) disbursements run rate on an annual basis
About Maj Invest:
Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark with regional offices in India and Peru, Maj Invest manages an AUM of USD 18 billion out of which around USD 2 billion are in private equity commitments. Maj Invest funds are sector focused, closed-end private equity funds investing growth capital directly into financial institutions across Asia, Latin America and Africa. With the launch of its third fund, Maj Invest aims to invest in digitally enabled financial institutions with high growth potential.
About Fasanara Capital:
Launched in 2011, Fasanara Capital is a UK based hedge fund and has more than USD 3.5bn in assets under management. It is one of the largest FinTech focused capital providers globally with multiple USD 100 Million+ FinTech investments across the globe. It provides financing to firms including Web3 companies and digital lending businesses and looks to invest in technology that is sustainable, scalable, and backed by data.
About FlexiLoans.com:
FlexiLoans.com has been ranked amongst the top 100 fintech innovators globally and has been one of the Leading Digital Lending Platforms in India. The company started with a vision to provide ‘Loans at a Click’ to SMEs while solving their problem of accessing quick, flexible and adequate funds. It uses proprietary technology and risk models that focus on advanced analytics and surrogate methods for pricing its credit products.
With more than 120 partnerships with ecosystem players such as Flipkart, Amazon, Pinelabs, and PayPal, it is at the forefront of providing lending solutions to MSME ecosystems in India. Visit www.flexiloans.com to know more about its products and services.
