Navadhan Nets INR 111 Cr To Offer Loans To Rural MSMEs

Rural India-focussed fintech startup Navadhan has reportedly raised INR 111 Cr ($12.8 Mn) as a part of its Series A funding round led by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s (NABARD) venture capital arm NabVentures. 

As per ET Now, citing a press statement, the round was co-led by Prime Ventures, along with participation from LNB Group and existing backers Varanium NexGen Fintech Fund, Gemba Capital, Faad, VC-Grid and Anicut.

The startup reportedly said that its round, which had an initial target of INR 80 Cr, was oversubscribed to INR 111 Cr. 

Navadhan plans to use the fresh capital to fuel growth and enhance its tech platform, AceN. Additionally, the capital will be deployed for expanding the startup’s footprint and diversifying its loan offerings.

Founded in 2019 by Nitin Agrawal, Vijay Haswani, Anirudh Ramakuru and Amit Biswal, Navadhan’s AceN offers end-to-end services, including customer sourcing, digital onboarding, underwriting, payments and collections. 

Meanwhile, the non-banking finance company (NBFC) also offers financial solutions to small businesses and microenterprises by connecting them to banks. It leverages its proprietary data science-powered underwriting model to assess the digital footprint and cash flow surrogates of borrowers. 

The fintech platform claims to have more than INR 700 Cr of debt lines available from more than 25 banks and NBFCs on its AceN platform, which enables API integrations. The company also claims that it has a presence in 700 pincodes spanning five states namely Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka and Odisha. 

“We are happy to find investors who share our mission of creating new-wealth (Nava-dhan) for the rural-preneurs… We are very excited now to have NabVentures since rural-MSMEs is our core customer segment. Also, happy to have support from LNB family office with a vantage of running seasoned businesses in India,” said Navadhan cofounder Nitin Agrawal.

Confirming the development in a post on LinkedIn, Prime Ventures’ Shivani Kulkarni said, “We partnered with Navadhan Capital a year ago and have been consistently impressed by the team’s execution, even amidst challenging conditions in the financial services sector. Its an honor to partner with you Nitin Agrawal Vijay Haswani Anirudh Ramakuru Amit Ranjan Biswal”.

Meanwhile, NabVentures’s chief investment officer (CIO) Ashish Choudhary reportedly said that the company has witnessed a “calibrated growth of 12X in the three years while maintaining good asset quality”. 

Inc42 has reached out to cofounder Agrawal for a comment on the development. This story will be updated with a response once it is received. 

The latest fundraise comes at a time when fintech continues to be the sector of choice for most Indian investors. Startups in the sector cornered the biggest chunk of funding in 2024, raising over $2.5 Bn across 162 deals. The momentum has continued well into 2025 as well. 

Earlier this month, Inc42 exclusively reported that fintech unicorn InCred Finance secured a debt of INR 258 Cr from a clutch of investors, led by wealth and asset management firm Neo Group, in multiple tranches since January. 

Fintech marketplace for home finance Ambak also bagged $7 Mn in a round in January this year. In the same month, Gurugram-based NBFC Bizloan also bagged INR 35 Cr in its Series A round led by Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and BLinC Invest.