Lendingkart Technologies Private Limited, India’s leading financial technology company has raised a fresh equity round of INR 212 crores (US $30 Million) led by existing investors including Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte Ltd (“FFH”), Bertelsmann India Investments and India Quotient signalling a strong support and trust in Lendingkart’s vision of financial inclusion and digital accessibility for everyone.
With this funding round, the total equity raised by Lendingkart stands at $143 Mn. The funding will be used to expand lending bases, deepen Lendingkart Group’s reach to small and underserved micro enterprises and further strengthen its technological and analytics capabilities. Credit Suisse acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Lendingkart Technologies.
Mr. Harshvardhan Lunia, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Lendingkart Technologies, said, “We are pleased with the momentum in our business and this equity will help us meet the growth opportunities we are seeing. Micro and small businesses represent a vibrant yet underserved segment of the Indian economy. The support of all of our customers, investors and employees is empowering us to build the leading financial services platform for this segment.”
Commenting on the investment in Lendingkart Technologies, Mr. Yeo Hong Ping, President, Fullerton Financial Holdings said, “Over the past year, Lendingkart’s business has seen robust growth and continues to exhibit great potential. We are delighted to continue partnering with Lendingkart who has been at the forefront of making working capital digitally accessible for MSMEs, as India continues its journey towards becoming a digitally enabled country.”
Mr. Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director, Bertelsmann India Investments said, “Digital lending is revolutionizing access to capital for MSMEs. With focused efforts of the Government and technological advances such as big data, digital lending has set the stage for disruption with greater formalisation, faster capital disbursements and vastly improved customer experience. We are proud to be a part of this incredible journey with Lendingkart as it continues to demonstrate market leadership in this space.”
Since its inception, Lendingkart Finance (the NBFC arm of Lendingkart Group) has evaluated nearly half a million applications, disbursing 60,000+ loans to more than 55,000 MSMEs in 1300+ cities across all 29 states and union territories of the nation, making it the NBFC with the largest geographical footprint in the country.
Aligned with the Government of India’s agenda of building financial inclusion, Lendingkart Finance works towards ensuring availability of credit for small and micro enterprises across the country that either do not have access to credit or are capital deficient currently. Lendingkart leverages robust in-house technology tools based on big data analytics and machine learning algorithms to evaluate creditworthiness. By analysing thousands of data points to assess factors like financial health, comparative market performance, social reliability & compliance and a distinctive evaluation process, Lendingkart aims to disburse loans with minimal paperwork within 72 hours.
Lendingkart Technologies has been identified as a “Soonicorn” by Inc42 in the digital lending space for possessing the potential to become a Unicorn company by 2020 and has also won the title of “Best Fintech Company” in the Lending category organized by KPMG in India along with Business Today.