NBFC DMI Finance Raises $47 Mn From 97-Year-Old Japanese Trust Sumitomo Mitsui, Others

Mumbai-based DMI Finance, the NBFC arm of the DMI Group has raised $47 Mn in an equity round from Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank and existing investors NXC Corporation and New Investment Solutions. The NBFC plans to use the funds to expand its user base among the rising digital lending ecosystem.

Previously, DMI Group has raised $123 Mn from NEXON’s NXC Corporation in April 2020, valuing the startup at over $1 Bn. Before that, DMI Group announced that it closed $230 Mn in a round in January 2019, led by New Investment Solutions. The current round takes DMI Finance’s total fundraising to date to $500 Mn.

Founded in 2008 by Shivashish Chatterjee and Yuvraja C Singh, DMI Group is a pan-India credit platform. It enables corporate lending, affordable housing finance, digital consumer and MSME finance, and asset management.

The DMI Group companies include digital and consumer MSME finance businesses under DMI Finance, a non-banking financial company, and a housing finance business under DMI Housing Finance.

The finance arm claims to be a market leading lender in India since 2009, especially in the embedded digital finance in India. DMI Finance’s products include personal loans, lines of credit, BNPL, OEM financing, and MSME loans. It also serves over 25 businesses including category-defining partnerships with Samsung and Reliance Retail.

The startup boasts a full-stack digital lending and loan life cycle management platform. It has a pan-India customer base of over 6 Mn which it expects to grow at least 10% month-on-month (MoM) through 2022.

Established in 1925, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank is Japan’s largest trust bank with ¥224 Tn ($1.95 Tn) of custody assets and ¥87 Tn($760 Bn) of assets under management. The Trust provides a wide range of services concerning commercial bank business, asset management and administration, and disposal of assets.

It has also partnered with trustee businesses such as pension trusts and investment trusts, and complementary businesses such as real estate brokerage and stock transfer agency services. This is the first time Sumitomo Mitsui has invested in an Indian startup.

The lending as a segment has been flourishing in the Indian startup ecosystem for quite some time now. From a handful of startups, India now houses more than 200 funded startups in the lendingtech space. The sector today has startups functioning and providing services to different sets of users in different formats.

These include B2B lending, B2C lending, P2P lending, then there are marketplaces that curate credit products for consumers and businesses. Besides, in recent times we have also seen massive adoption of BNPL models (Buy Now Pay Later) by startups as well as industry giants such as Amazon.

In 2021 alone, about $1.38 Bn was raised by lendingtech startups which is more than double raised in 2020, showcasing the need and the demand for online lending products in the market.

Update | Addition of NXC Corporation and New Investment Solutions as investors in the current round.