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Ahmedabad-headquartered fintech startup Lendingkart Group has raised about $4.65 Mn (INR 30 Cr) non-convertible debentures from alternative asset management firm Anicut Capital.
The startup will use the newly raised capital to strengthen the lending operations of its subsidiary NBFC, Lendingkart Finance Limited.
Commenting on the development, Harshvardhan Lunia, CEO and co-founder, Lendingkart Technologies said: “The latest round of NCD will further bolster our loan book and enable us to serve the credit needs of many more SMEs. Led by financial industry veterans like Ashvin Chadha and IAS Balamurugan, Anicut has emerged as a perfect match to partner with us in our growth journey.” further adding “We look forward to leveraging Anicut’s rich experience in banking and small business financing in times to come.”
Lendingkart was founded in 2014, by ex-banker and ISB Hyderabad alumnus, Harshvardhan Lunia and ex-ISRO scientist, IIM Bangalore alumnus, Mukul Sachan.
On the other hand, Anicut Capital is the investment manager for Grand Anicut Fund a category II AIF (Alternative Investment Fund). As per an official statement, it is an AIF 2 fund with a target corpus of $46.5 Mn (INR 300 Cr).
Ashvin Chadha, co-founder, Anicut Capital said, “Traditional financial institutions only meet a part of the huge funding needs of small businesses. The credit gap creates abundant opportunities for new-age players to become a lender of choice for these underserved SMEs. Our collaboration with Lendingkart Group is a move to rapidly bridge this gap. We were impressed with the experience founders bring to the table as well as the team they have built to work towards this cause. Their state of the art technology platform and machine learning based credit models are the disruption this segment needs.”
With this move, Lendingkart Group has expanded its operations pan-India. It claims to have been queried by over 200K SMEs for their credit requirements. It offers quick and easy collateral-free loans with minimal paperwork.
In July 2016, it raised $32 Mn in (INR 205 Cr.) in Series B round. The funding was divided into two parts viz. $20 Mn as equity and $12 Mn as debt. The investment was led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII), with participation from Darrin Capital Management and existing investors – Mayfield India, Saama Capital, and India Quotient. In October 2016, it acqui-hired Bengaluru-based e-lending marketplace, KountMoney.
As per a Nasscom report the Indian fintech software market is forecasted to touch $2.4 Bn by 2020, from the current $1.2 Bn. Other startups in this segment include Quikrupee, SMEcorner, Innoviti, Biz2credit, smehelpline, and smegetmoney.
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