Exclusive: Fintech Startup CreditMantri Raising INR 6 Cr From IDG Capital, Others

Chennai-based fintech startup CreditMantri is raising fresh funds from its existing investors — IDG Ventures, Elevar Equity and impact investor Accion.

According to the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) filings accessed by Inc42, CreditMantri’s board of directors passed a resolution on May 6 to raise INR 6 Cr from IDG Ventures, Elevar Equity and three different units of Accion.

As part of the deal, CreditMantri is issuing 34,990 and 27,992 preference shares to IDG Ventures India Fund II LLC and Elevar M-III (Elevar Equity). Accion’s three entities — Accion Frontier Inclusion Mauritius, Accion Africa-Asia Investment Company and Accion Venture Lab, LP will get 34,990, 4,899 and 9,097 preference shares respectively. The price per share for the deal stood at INR 533.

Prior to this, CreditMantri had secured $7.6 Mn in its Series B round of funding led by Quona Capital. Elevar Equity, IDG Ventures, Accion Venture Lab and Newid Capital also participated in the round which took place in March 2017.

Founded by Ranjit Punia, Rajasundaram Sudarshan and Gowri Thyagarajan Mukherjee in 2012, CreditMantri is a data-driven platform which provides a free financial report to users based on their credit history. Based on the report, the platform suggests users with options to import their credit score to secure personal loans, car loans, home loans, among others. It also provides users with an option to apply for credit cards according to their needs.

The platform also acts as a marketplace for selling loans and credit cards to users. The platform has partnered with more than 40 lending companies which provide loans to users. It claims to have served more than 15 Mn users. The platform claims to be transmitting personal data of users to third parties securely while encrypting the data stored in their systems.

Investors Turn Bullish On Digital Lending Startups

According to DataLabs by Inc42, the credit demand in India is projected to be worth $1.41 Tn by 2022, growing at a rate of 3.73% between FY17 and FY22. A survey conducted by BCG and Google in 2018 highlighted that 23% of consumers in India have availed retail loans digitally.

In one of the ‘Ask Me Anything’ webinars hosted by Inc42, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had noted that lending is one of the biggest opportunities which comes out of these times. “Companies that swing around to the opportunity of distributing unsecured loans and collecting them well and underwriting them well will become the champions of tomorrow,” he added.

Recently, many investors have pumped their funds in lending startups. For instance, Bengaluru-based NIRA raised $2.1 Mn in Pre-Series A funding round from new and existing investors based in the UK and India while Indian School Finance Company is raising INR 40 Cr from US-based impact investor Gray Matters Capital Inc.

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