Yubi Group Raises INR 250 Cr From Founder Gaurav Kumar

Digital lending unicorn Yubi (formerly CredAvenue) has raised INR 250 Cr ($29.8 Mn) in an equity capital infusion from its founder and CEO Gaurav Kumar. 

The company’s board approved this equity round earlier this month. 

However, the company did not specify how much equity the founder will net from the investment and the purpose of the capital infusion. 

Yubi, founded as CredAvenue in 2017 by Kumar, is a debt platform that connects enterprises with lenders and investors. It is backed by Peak XV, Lightspeed, Lightrock, TVS Capital, among others.

Yubi Group comprises corporate debt solution platform Yubi, fixed income investment platform Aspero, end-to-end debt collection platform Spocto, credit lifecycle SaaS platform Corpository and credit analytics firm Finfort. 

It claims to have facilitated over INR 1.4 Lakh Cr in debt volumes and serving more than 17,000 enterprises and 6,200 investors and lenders. 

The investment comes over a month after Yubi announced major leadership appointments across its group companies — Yubi, Corpository and Aspero — as well as a host of other changes across its product and finance functions.

The startup last raised a capital infusion of $137 Mn in its Series B round in March 2022. The round saw the startup enter the unicorn club, with its valuation spiking up to $1.3 Bn.  

Yubi Group posted INR 327.6 Cr in revenue in FY23, nearly 2X higher than FY22’s net revenue of INR 165.6 Cr. Its net loss also surged to INR 509.8 Cr in FY23, almost ninefold higher than the net loss of INR 57.4 Cr in the previous year.

This marks the second unicorn investment in the startup ecosystem led by the startup’s founder itself this month. Earlier this month, hospitality major OYO raised INR 1,457 Cr (around $175 Mn) in a down round led by Ritesh Agarwal floated Singapore-based entity Patient Capital. 

The trend comes at a time when investor interest in backing late stage startups is diminishing. In the first half of the ongoing year (H1 2024) has seen late startups raise $2.7 Bn, a decline of 18% from $3.3 Bn raised in the year-ago period.