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Just 2 weeks after raising $3.8 million in debt from State Bank of India, the Ahmedabad based Fintech startup Lendingkart finances has raised $4.7 million in the first ever foreign debt funding from a Dutch development bank (Nederlandse Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden 0r NV FMO.
The recently acquired funding will be used by the company to grow their loan book and reach more number of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Lendingkart was founded by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan in 2014. It provides collateral-free loans to small businesses ranging from ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 40 lakh.
Till date, Lendingkart has disbursed over 20,000 loans to over 13,000 SMEs across 950 cities in India. Its main goal is to provide short-term loans of small sizes. They have designed certain tools that determine their customer’s creditworthiness using machine learning algorithms and big data analytics.
After the latest funding round, the total amount raised by the company has elevated to around $64 million, most of which comes from non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) such as Aditya Birla Financial Services, IFMR Capital, and Mannapuram Finance. In September 2017, Lendingkart raised around $10.9 million from Sistema Asia Fund as well as existing investors Bertelsmann India Investment, Mayfield India, Saama Capital and others.
Apart from SBI, private sector banks Kotak Mahindra Bank and Yes Bank have also joined hands with Lendingkart as lenders. In October 2017, Lendingkart announced a partnership with TransUnion CIBIL, a credit information company which allow owners of SMEs to access all the loans offered by Lendingkart Finance on the TransUnion marketplace platform.
SME sector has a contribution of over 45% to our nation’s GDP. This is around three times more than that of the corporate sector’s sector. However, still, the sector faces a debt gap of $46 billion.
