SME Lending Startup Lendingkart Raises $87 Mn In Equity Funding

Post raising $4.7 Mn funding round in January 2018, Ahmedabad-based SME lending platform Lendingkart has secured over $87 Mn in an equity funding round as part of its Series C round.

The round is being led by Singapore’s Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte Ltd. along with the participation from existing investors.

Credit Suisse acted as the exclusive financial advisor to the SME lending startup.

With this new round of funding, Lendingkart Group’s cumulative equity and debt raising will exceed $173 Mn (INR 1129 Cr).

Earlier in December 2017, Lendingkart raised $3.8 Mn in debt funding from Indian public sector bank SBI. It also secured $10.9 Mn (INR 70 Cr) funding from Sistema Asia Fund as well as existing investors Bertelsmann India Investment, Mayfield India, Saama Capital and others in September 2017.

The funds from the latest funding round will enable the SME lending startup to further strengthen its technological and analytics capabilities. The Group also aims to expand its credit product offerings to deepen its reach to small enterprises and reach out to underserved micro enterprises.

GAN Chee Yen, CEO of Fullerton Financial Holdings said, “Today, we are witnessing the rapid advancement and adoption of technological innovation in India. We believe that the deployment of technology to develop scalable and accessible financial services platforms, incorporating big data analytics and machine learning, will be critical to any lending business serving the underbanked and underserved customers in India.”

Lendingkart Group has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Fullerton India Capital Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of FFH regarding possible opportunities and initiatives to support their respective businesses.

Founded in 2014 by ex-banker Harshvardhan Lunia and former ISRO scientist Mukul Sachan, Lendingkart is an instant working capital finance platform that provides SMEs with easy access to credit and working capital.

Since its inception, Lendingkart Finance (the NBFC arm of Lendingkart Group) claims to have evaluated more than 100,000 applications, disbursed over 20,000 loans in more than 950 cities helping more than 13,000 SMEs across 23 diverse sectors.

Lendingkart Finance is working towards ensuring availability of credit for small and micro enterprises across the country that currently do not have access to credit or are capital deficient. Lendingkart uses robust in-house technology tools based on big data analytics and machine learning algorithms to evaluate creditworthiness.

Thousands of data points are used to assess factors like financial health, comparative market performance, social reliability & compliance. Once the evaluation process is completed, most of the successful loan applicants receive their loans within 72 hours. Lendingkart has expanded its operations pan India and offers quick and easy loans with minimal paperwork.

In a short span of time, Lendingkart has grabbed a major chunk in the SME lending market of India. The recent equity funding round will definitely add to the companies efforts to cater to the needs of growing segment of Indian SMEs.