Loan marketplace Deal4Loans raises $15M funding from Franklin Templeton
Mywish Marketplaces (MMPL), the company that owns the website Deal4loans.com, announced on Tuesday that Franklin Templeton Ltd. has invested $15 million in the company.
The funding, reportedly, will be used to develop a new platform with investor Franklin Templeton, which will include wealth management and investment product-related services. Further, the investment will also be used to expand MyWish’s small business loans category.
Founded in 2009 by Rishi Mehra, Deal4Loans offers comparisons of retails loans across categories of home, personal, credit cards and property, as well as education loans.
Having a mix of 50 lending partners, and seven million registered users, the marketplace uses algorithms to acquire customers for the partner bank’s loan products, matching customers with products.
According to media reports, the firm had raised an undisclosed amount of funding in April from a bunch of high profile investors including California-based Sherpalo Ventures, Whatsapp’s global business head Neeraj Arora and former Wall Street hedge fund investor Puru Vashishtha.
In the future, the company also plans to expand its presence from 200 to 350 cities. Since inception, Deal4Loans has helped disburse Rs 10,000 crore worth of loans.
The platform was earlier run by WRS Info India Pvt. Ltd, with properties of WRS now consolidated into Mywish. Later, Mywish Marketplaces, led by Rishi Mehra and Puru Vashishtha, was founded in October 2015.
Speaking about the investment, Vijay Advani, Co-President, Franklin Resources, Inc. commented,
This investment is inline with our continued efforts towards making strategic investments across geographies in companies that align with our global business priorities. We are impressed by MMPL’s strong domain expertise and see good growth potential going forward, particularly in the planned expansion of MMPL’s business to include wealth management and investment product-related services.
Excited about the investment, Puru Vashishtha, Board Director, Mywish Marketplaces Private Limited, said,
“There is significant overlap between the core values of MMPL and Franklin Templeton, such as putting customers first, focus on quality, high integrity and focus on technology and capital efficiency. We will benefit from access to the Franklin Templeton leadership team’s experience of building financial services businesses in the world. We also look forward to working with Franklin Templeton on developing a new technology platform for wealth management and investment product-related services.”
With offices in 35 countries, California-based Franklin Templeton Investments Ltd. has over $732 billion in assets under management as of June 30 2016.
The year of Fintech
Just today, Prime Venture Partners announced investing $1 million in fintech company NiYO. Further, with the number of deals in the first half of 2016 already matching up to the total number of fintech startup deals of 2015 , there is no doubt that 2016 is the year for fintech investments. According to the company, the sector of small deal loans is the fastest-growing category, with the firm expecting it to account for 20 percent of its business in 2016-17.
Website: www.deal4loans.com
