RBI Innovation Hub Pilots Unsecured Loan Offerings For Gig Workers

The Reserve Bank of India Innovation Hub (RBIH) has reportedly partnered with digital lender Vivifi Finance to launch a pilot project aimed at providing unsecured loans to gig workers.

As per an ET report, the pilot is currently in the early stages.

The pilot launched two weeks ago, aims to develop a digital platform for providing loans to cab-hailing app drivers, such as those working with Ola and Uber, food delivery drivers employed by Swiggy and Zomato, and other gig and temporary workers.

“The RBI innovation hub is running a pilot with Vivifi Finance and three other gig platforms, where alternate data is being used to underwrite these gig workers,” a source told ET. “The idea is to bring them into formal banking channels and offer them credit based on that data.”

The Reserve Bank Innovation Hub is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), established to promote and foster an environment that accelerates innovation across the financial sector.

According to another official, the pilot was launched recently, and stakeholders are utilising data from banks, credit bureaus, and alternative sources, including economic and behavioural data gathered from gig platforms. If the pilot proves successful, the next step will be to integrate it with the Unified Lending Interface (ULI) platform, the report added.

For context, the Unified Lending Interface (ULI) is a digital public infrastructure designed to provide lenders with access to critical financial, non-financial, and alternative data for informed credit decisions. Currently, 36 lenders, including banks and NBFCs, are onboarded, leveraging over 50 data services such as authentication, land records from six states, satellite data, property searches, dairy insights, and document verification.

Over 600,000 loans, totalling INR 27,000 Cr, have been disbursed through the ULI platform during the pilot project.

The RBIH initially launched the Public Tech Platform for Frictionless Credit to develop an end-to-end digital solution for agriculture loans. This platform was subsequently renamed the Unified Lending Interface and entered its pilot phase on August 17, 2023.

Vivifi India was founded by Anil K Pinapala and Srinath Kompella in 2016. It offers buy now, pay later (BNPL) services through its major product FlexSalary, an instant personal emergency line of credit. 

It also offers instant personal loans of up to INR 2 Lakh with its FlexPay app. With this, the startup claims to have disbursed INR 1,000 Cr to over 5 Lakh customers in 2023, and aims to triple the number by next year. Pinapala also told Moneycontrol that the company is also looking to add “financial management features as it is in demand”

In January the Hyderabad-based NBFC Vivifi India Finance Pvt Ltd secured $75 Mn to expand offerings for MSMEs.