BankBazaar secures $30M from credit rating agency Experian, to up staff strength by 400

On Tuesday, financial marketplace BankBazaar.com raised $30 million in a funding round led by credit reporting agency Experian. This latest round of financing brings BankBazaar’s total funding amount to $110 million.

While speaking to YourStory, Adhil Shetty, CEO and Co-founder, BankBazaar.com, stated that the funds from this round will be used in three different focus areas.

First, to strengthen their technology play by hiring more resources, moving closer to their vision of providing a paperless technology platform.

In this regard, Adhil announced that they have already hired 400 professionals this fiscal year and will be hiring another 400 individuals over the course of the year. 

The second area of investment is their credit scoring product which BankBazaar has built along with Experian. On the BankBazaar app, an individual can access and find out their credit score within three minutes, with the algorithms suggesting additional tools to improve that score.

The company will also invest funds from this round in strengthening their presence in Singapore and Malaysia.

“We believe that the intellectual capital for paperless technologies is not just unique to India, and therefore will continue to strengthen our presence in the markets of Singapore and Malaysia.”

According to Adhil, the Singapore market, which BankBazaar forayed into last February, already has a strong presence and will contribute close to 10 percent of the company’s entire revenue by March 2018. 

At present, BankBazaar is live in Singapore, the UAE, Mexico, as well as in the Philippines.

Further, speaking on the investment, Adhil commented,

“This a step-up round, considering we already have a lot of the money from Series C still there. We have always focused on the strategic value which our investors get on board, and being the largest credit reporting agency, Experian will just accelerate our vision further.”

On the growth of the company, the founder commented that the BankBazaar platform had close to 15 million website visits in July last year. This was the same time the company had raised $60 million in a Series C round led by Amazon.

The firm claims to have received 50 million visits in the July-to-September quarter this year. 

According to Adhil, they expect 20 million website visits this month alone.

Commenting on the investment in BankBazaar, Ben Elliott, CEO, Experian Asia Pacific, said,

“We believe that consumer adoption of fully digital experiences coupled with paperless access to financial products will push customer acquisition 10x by 2020. With e-commerce shoppers growing significantly over the next few years, companies with paperless technology platforms are well-positioned to leverage the latest trends in consumer technology and help millions of Indians gain access to formal banking and finance products.”

Speaking about the Series D round, an Amazon spokesperson said,

“We look forward to continuing to work with BankBazaar. The company’s management team is laser-focused on customers and we are enthusiastic about their vision for a paperless and frictionless consumer experience.”

At present, the company claims to have 85 financial partners with close to 12 active products on the marketplace, operating in around 20 cities across India.

On being asked whether BankBazaar will be introducing new products this fiscal year, Adhil commented,

“The entire management is focused on paperless and strengthening our positioning on the available products rather than expanding horizontally.”

BankBazaar, which aims to hit close to 100 million visits every quarter, expects to be EBITDA positive by the end of this fiscal year.