Unitus Ventures Invests $1 Mn In Fintech Startup SuperMoney

Mumbai-based fintech startup SuperMoney on Thursday (February 6) announced that it has raised $1 Mn in pre-Series A funding from early-stage investor Unitus Ventures.

The fresh funds will be used to strengthen its team across technology, business development and back-end operations besides expanding beyond the 12 cities it is currently operating in.

Founded in 2017 by Shiv Nandan Negi and Nikhil Banerjee, SuperMoney offers financial solutions to the gig economy and blue-collar workforce. It offers them a suite of financial products focused towards customized credit, savings and insurance solutions. SuperMoney’s typical customers include cab drivers, delivery personnel, shop floor workers and other blue-collar staff employed by corporations.

“The blue-collar consumer and the emerging gig-economy segments are today not serviced by traditional banks and NBFCs and this is the $100 Bn market opportunity that we are tapping into. We aim to service 1 Mn customers in the next 24 months,” said Nikhil Banerjee, cofounder of SuperMoney.

SuperMoney: 300K Customers And More

SuperMoney is built on a B2B2C model where it accesses customers by partnering with enterprises that have large pools of blue-collar workers, contract employees or service providers. SuperMoney offers micro-credit and micro-savings solutions structured to fit the nuances of each job function/use case in the respective sectors.

The company says that with 300K customer registrations on the platform, SuperMoney has facilitated disbursement of over 55K loans to date. The startup partners with tech and gig economy platforms including Uber, Swiggy, Shuttl, Udaan and MedPlus among others to extend its suite of products.

Supermoney offers loans with an average ticket size of INR 10 K presently for a tenure of two-three months. The company is currently operational in Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Kolkata among other cities.

“SuperMoney’s enterprise-led approach makes their ability to acquire and service customers more efficient and not just underwrite but also navigate credit cycles better. They are going beyond just credit and offer a suite of financial products that makes them attractive to customers and their employees,” said Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, partner at Unitus Ventures.

The Gig Economy And Fintech In India

Evidently, India is moving fast towards a digital economy through initiatives such as the Digital India programme. With an increase in urbanisation and ever-increasing usage of the Internet, India has the second-largest online population in the world with more than 600 Mn internet users.

With Millennials increasingly opting for contractual and gig work for better pay and retain the flexibility to explore more avenues, India’s gig economy is experiencing an upsurge. The Indian gig-economy is bound to grow rapidly with the rise in the number of innovations in the market, the push for commercialisation and the potential growth of the digital sector.

India has 200 Mn households without formal access to credit and minimal penetration of insurance and savings solutions. This challenge is furthered by the fact that traditional lending models continue to be physically led with high-cost structures.

Mary Meeker, then a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and now a general partner at Bond, said in her 2018 Internet trends report that freelancer work is growing three times faster than the growth of the total workforce. According to Intuit estimates, gig economy workers will represent 43% of the total workforce in India by 2020.

According to the Professional Gig Economy 2018-19 Report Card’ by gig platform Flexing It, nearly 72% of all gig projects were in large corporates and professional service firms in 2018-19 compared to 52% two years ago. It is also estimated that the Indian freelancer market will grow to a whopping $20-30 Bn by 2025.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.