Digital Lending Startup Propelld Raises $2 Mn From Stellaris VP And India Quotient

Digital lending startup Propelld has raised $2 Mn from Stellaris Venture Partners and India Quotient. Indian Angel Network and TaxiForSure’s Raghunandan G, and Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma also participated in the round.

According to MCA filings accessed by Inc42, Stellaris Venture Partners have invested $928K to acquire 4.8K shares in the fintech company. While, India Quotient made an investment of $638K to buy 3.3K shares. 

With these fresh funds, the company plans to expand its partner institutes and students by 10 times over the next 18 months. 

The Bengaluru-based company was founded by Bibhu Prasad Das, Victor Senapaty, and Brijesh Samantaray in 2017. Propelld is aimed at providing credit options to students of vocational courses with a low credit score or a non-existent credit history, which limits their access to traditional lending institutions. To avail its customised credit solutions, the company partners with lending partners and institutes.

Instead of looking at past credit or work history, the company uses their proprietary employability-based underwriting algorithm to assess the future employment prospects and creditworthiness of its customers. 

Adding to this, founder of Propelld, Das said, “We are expanding the education credit market by creating tailor-made loan products with inputs from our institute and NBFC partners, so that default risk is identified early, and the downside is shared between the stakeholders.”

Propelld has tied with over 150 educational institutes across the country including IT training institutes such as NIIT, Aptech, Pune Institute of Business Management and more. Further, Propelld claimed to have disbursed loans to more than 1500 students so far. 

Ritesh Banglani, partner, Stellaris Venture Partners, said, “Education financing is a massive under-served opportunity in India where a tiny percentage of students have access to bank credit. Propelled can determine the students’ future income and consequently offer credit to a much larger student population.”

Overall, digital lending has been pegged as one of the fastest growing segments in the India’s fintech space. A BCG report has predicted the digital lending industry to touch $1 Tn mark in the next five years. Other existing players in the digital lending sector include Lendingkart, PerkFinance, Avail Finance, Aye Finance and more. 

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