Exclusive: Digital Lending Startup CASHe Raises INR 12 Cr

App-based credit lending platform CASHe has raised INR 12 Cr in two tranches, from the Surendra Kedia Family Private Trust and Saroj Kumar Patnaik. 

According to filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs accessed by Inc42, CASHe, through its parent company Aeries Financial Technologies Private Limited, has issued 2,15,824 equity shares at a face value of INR 10 per share and premium of INR 221.67 per share to the Surendra Kedia Family Private Trust, aggregating to a total of INR 5 Cr. Additionally, the company has issued 3,02,154 equity shares at the same face value and premium amount to Saroj Kumar Patnaik, aggregating to a total amount of INR 7 Cr. 

Launched in April 2016, CASHe is an alternative lending platform delivered through an app. It provides unsecured short-term personal loans to young employed professionals based on their social profile, merit, and earning potential. The startup assesses applicants through a proprietary AI-based credit-scoring platform called the Social Loan Quotient (SLQ) which determines creditworthiness by using multiple unique data points based on social and mobile data footprints. On the basis of these parameters, each applicant gets a credit profile. CASHe competes with PaySense, LoanTap and EarlySalary, among several other startups in the space.

As of last year, CASHe, founded by tech entrepreneur Raman Kumar, had raised total funding worth $12 Mn (INR 88.96 Cr), which includes debt funding from Kotak Bank and IFMR Capital. In 2017, CASHe raised $3.8 Mn (INR 28.17 Cr) in Series A funding from an investor group led by Mathew Cyriac, senior managing director at The Blackstone Group. 

While speaking to Inc42 last year, CASHe founder Kumar revealed that the company had disbursed 85,000 loans worth INR 510 Cr in FY18, which is nearly 10X the INR 55 Cr it disbursed in 2016-17. The company had claimed to be receiving more than 1,000 loan requests in a given day, adding that the average ticket size ranged from INR 35,000 to INR 40,000. While Kumar had declined to share the company’s revenue projections for FY 2019-20, he had said that CASHe was on track to turn “highly profitable” in FY20. 

According to the company’s ‘ The 2019 Millennial Loan-o-Nomics’ report, which analyses the borrowing and spending habits of millennials, medical expenses and consumer durables topped the chart for consumer availing digital credit facilities. CASHe undertakes customer data analysis on a monthly basis. 

The report revealed that while 57% of the loans taken were for emergencies, the remaining 43% were for reasons which can be described as ‘aspirational’, among other interesting data insights revealed in the report. 

As per DataLabs by Inc42 estimates, the credit demand in India is projected to be worth $1.41 Tn by 2022. The estimated growth rate in credit demand is 3.73% between FY17 and FY22. However, the Covid-19 crisis is said to be an unprecedented boost to the lending space in India.

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