B2B Fintech SaaS Startup FinBox Secures $15 Mn To Expand To SEA

Bengaluru-based B2B fintech SaaS startup FinBox has raised $15 Mn (INR 115 Cr) in a funding round led by A91 Partners. Aditya Birla Ventures and Flipkart Ventures also participated in the funding round, along with existing investors Arali Ventures.

The startup plans to utilise the funding in scaling up operations and offerings and expand to the Southeast Asian market. FinBox said that it will also double its current workforce to enable the said expansion plans.

Founded in 2017 by Rajat Deshpande, Anant Deshpande, Srijan Nagar, and Nikhil Bhawsinka, FinBox offers APIs and SDKs including a fintech stack and a data intelligence suite, allowing startups to launch digital credit products such as BNPL, personal loans, invoice financing. The startup also facilitates embedded finance in non-fintech startups.

It also offers credit risk intelligence to around 25 banks, NBFCs, fintechs and credit marketplaces. FinBox counts the likes of ZestMoney, Khatabook, TrueBalance, Home Credit India and IIFL among its 50 clients in total. The startup claims that it will have enabled the disbursement of INR 20,000 Cr in credit by March 2023.

Rajat Deshpande, cofounder and CEO of FinBox, said that the startup’s goal is to take the complexity out of financial services and make it easier to build and launch newer, more effective products.

“We are driven to change the unit economics of the current lending setup such that lending becomes an opportunity for value creation and capture,” Deshpande added.

The CEO added that FinBox looks to enable credit for India’s 10 Mn SMEs. It plans to do so by an ecosystem play, where the user is at the centre of the value chain and products and delivery are designed for them. Embedded finance infrastructure makes formal credit accessible, digital, and financially viable for all stakeholders, he added.

“We realised early that responsible use of alternate data for underwriting can be a game-changer for lenders in India where less than 50% of credit eligible population can prove its creditworthiness and access credit,” said Anant Deshpande, cofounder and head of data products, FinBox.

Piyush Bansal, head, Aditya Birla Ventures, said, “We are bullish on embedded finance as space and are confident that with their sound domain understanding and strong tech capabilities, the founding team at FinBox is well placed to leverage the growing opportunity that this space provides.”

India’s fintech ecosystem is one of the strongest within the larger startup ecosystem, with a total market opportunity of $1.3 Tn by 2025, per an Inc42 report. Within fintech, fintech SaaS is the third-fastest growing segment, touted to grow at a CAGR of 40% between 2021-25 to reach a market opportunity of $12.6 Bn.

Lendingtech is the largest segment within fintech, accounting for 47%, or $616 Bn, of the total market opportunity by 2025.

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