Deeptech Focussed Bharat Innovation Fund Leads Extended Series B Round In CreditVidya

The Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) affiliated Bharat Innovation Fund has led the $3 Mn extended Series B funding round of deep tech startup CreditVidya. The partners at Falcon Edge Capital also invested in their personal capacity in the fresh round of equity funding.

Prior to this CreditVidya raised a $5 Mn Series B funding round in September 2017 and $2 Mn in Series A round in June 2016.

Backed by Matrix Partners and Kalaari Capital, the Mumbai-based B2B company was launched in 2013 by Abhishek Agarwal and Rajiv Raj. It uses advanced data analytics for customer profiling, credit risk assessment and fraud detection services.

At present, the company boasts of having 40 lending partners on board and have processed more than 13 Mn customer applications. The team also claims that their scorecard is two times as powerful and it can help increase approval rates by more than 15% and reduce delinquency by 33%.

“If players like mobile wallets, cab aggregators, original equipment manufacturers want to lend to their large customer base, they can use our tech platform to evaluate borrowers,” added Agarwal.

The company looks to utilise the latest round of funding to scale the business further and get quality investors on the board who can help them with their advisory. It further aims to disburse more than $14 Mn (INR 100 Cr) MSME loans over the next financial year by connecting companies with large user base with traditional lenders.

Other startups in this segment are Paisabazaar, Rupeepower, Bankbazaar, CreditMantri, Rubique among others.

Bharat Innovation Fund is investing actively in the deeptech segment. It announced the first close of its $100 Mn fund in July 2018, after securing around 50% commitments from marquee institutional investors. In November 2018, it also participated in $3.3 Mn funding round of IoT startup DeTect Technologies.

Certainly, deeptech is gaining significant interest from the investor segment. According to Inc42 DataLabs tech startup funding report 2018, deeptech startups gained $151 Mn in funding across 42 deals last year. Here GreyOrange, ThinCL, GoQii, Servify were among the top funding grossers of 2018.

Most recently, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India has introduced its startup accelerator and incubation programme called Surge and will invest across sectors such as consumer internet, deeptech, enterprise software, healthcare technology, fintech, crypto or direct-to-consumer brands.