ORIGA Leasing Raises $1 Mn From ah! Ventures & 500 Startups

Mumbai-based asset financing company ORIGA Leasing has raised over $1 Mn (INR 7 Cr) from ah! Ventures, 500 Startups and a consortium of high profile investors.

The startup plans to use the funds towards leasing of assets, people and technology in order to democratise the way SMEs procure and manage assets in India to have a high capex.

ORIGA is the first company in the alternative financing ecosystem with respect to asset leasing for high growth business models.

According to industry reports, the market for alternative financing is conservatively estimated to be $ 50 Bn and as per ORIGA. There is a huge gap between conventional financing available and the need of new age companies. This is the gap that ORIGA tries to bridge.

ORIGA Leasing was started by Shrirang Tambe in May 2013 with a core philosophy of ‘Access to Finance’. The company provides alternative financing through its asset leasing solutions to high growth companies across segments such as healthcare, sanitation, waste management, alternative energy, manufacturing and service oriented businesses.

It focuses mainly on leasing of assets which generate revenues for its clients. For this, it has developed an highly innovative solution of Asset Life Cycle Management (ALCM) that helps its clients conserve their capital for working capital and marketing while ORIGA takes care of their assets in totality.

Shrirang, Founder and CEO of ORIGA said, “One of the key aspects of ORIGA Leasing is to invest significantly in building a robust technology – right from customer acquisition to asset management. Besides innovativeness in our leasing products, we also aspire to become world’s largest fintech leasing company and expect to touch an asset book for $100 Mn within next three to four years just in India.”

Ulhas Deshpande, investor and board member of ORIGA stated that it is an innovative business model that would immensely help mid size entrepreneurs gain access to much needed funding. Considering the above statement, 46% of the SME financing in Europe and 72% of SME financing in America takes place through asset leasing. There is a huge market opportunity in India as it is less than 1% of the total credit disbursed.

One of the investors, Harshad Lahoti, founder & CEO of ah! Ventures supported ORIGA’s idea of providing asset leasing solutions for the high growth unbanked and under-banked SMEs. He envisioned that each vertical of ORIGA has the potential to touch millions of dollars by themselves, and it could aspire to become a bank and contribute to the ongoing financial inclusion drive of India in next decade.

Another investor Nitesh Damani, Director of Sugal & Damani Group said that through its business model, ORIGA Leasing will contribute significantly to various initiatives of the Government such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Make in India and Startup India. “It was exciting to see that all the sectors ORIGA started off with in 2013 are foremost in the initiatives taken by the present Government.”

CLUB ah! has over 4500+ startups, 465+ seed/angel investors and over 65 VCs & institutional investors on its platform. It has invested close to $8 Mn (INR 55 Cr) in over 20 startups spread across varied industries and domains.

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