This husband-wife duo makes AnyTimeLoan a reality
Hyderabad-based ATL uses advanced tools and technologies revolving around Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Predictive Science to ensure real time decisions on borrowings and lendings.
At a Glance
Startup: AnyTimeLoan
Founders: Keerthi Kumar Jain and Neha Jain
Year it was founded: 2014
Where it is based: Hyderabad
Sector: Fintech
Problem it solves: Peer-to-peer lending
Funding raised: $4 million in Series A from Spice Digital
One cannot stress enough the importance of getting money on time. When hardships strike, and the going gets tough, no one wants to resort to multiple procedures and paperwork.
“I had gone through this phase in my own life, when I was pursuing my engineering; my father was unwell and bedridden, and I needed money urgently. Coping with the situation somehow, I decided that I would solve this huge problem - that of easy availability of money,” says Keerthi Kumar Jain, 36, Founder of AnyTimeLoan.
AnyTimeLoan.in (ATL) is an on-demand peer-to-peer lending platform.
One can borrow and lend from its website and mobile application, available on Android and iOS platform, at any point in time, all days of the week.
Keerthi is an engineering graduate and an alumnus of IIM and ISB with over 14 years of experience across financial service and infrastructure sectors. He co-founded the AnyTimeLoan along with his wife Neha Jain, 32, who is a Chartered Accountant by profession and has over nine years of experience in taxation, compliance, and audit. She was associated as Partner in a CA firm before she took over ATL as co-founder wherein she handles entire finance, compliance, etc.
Maximises returns - Minimises cost
Starting with a sole purpose to maximise returns for lenders, and minimise cost for borrowers, today ATL claims to have successfully disbursed over 43,000 loans, aggregating over Rs 80 crore with gross non performing asset ratio of less than 0.63 percent.
With services available throughout the country, ATL was incubated at T-Hub Hyderabad.
ATL offers personal or consumer loans, as low as Rs 1,000 to Rs 1 lakh; educational loans from Kindergarten to grade 12 – called K12 loans; and micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) business loans of Rs 30,000 up to Rs 50 lakh. Business and education loans do not require any collaterals, physical documents, or guarantors.
The firm lets eligible borrowers avail instant loans, from its listed lenders through bank-to-bank transfers, across India. “For first-time borrowers, we have a process of online registration which is a one-time process — our system would seek user consent to mine his/her data and KYC documents to come out with a real-time output without considering the borrower’s credit score,” Keerthi explains.
Real-time decision making
Talking about the challenges and how he overcame them, Keerthi says, “The journey has been quite exciting and full of learnings for ATL; on one side we had to educate people with savings, to consider lending as an alternate asset class and generate better returns for themselves; while on other side, ATL had to develop a scientific and data-driven algorithm that could not just assess borrowers worthiness but also self-learn from its mistakes (if any), as more and more data passes through its system in a paperless, contact less and presence less, digital ecosystem."
He continues, “ATL has been continuously investing in its technology. Today, it has not just developed IP around its core logic that ensures real-time decision making for its borrowers without any human intervention. But also, has got one of the best loan repayment performance track records in the industry, thereby generating an average yield of over 28 percent to its lenders.”
ATL manages the entire loan life cycle — from onboarding to assessing borrowers to disbursement to collection — thereby providing a reliable, transparent and proven asset class to its lenders.
It generates its revenues only after the lender sees returns — ATL does not charge its lenders/borrowers anything unless the loan is successfully repaid to its lenders through the respective borrower.
As simple as drawing money from an ATM
ATL uses advanced tools and technologies revolving around Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Predictive Science to ensure real-time, 24/7 decisions for its borrowers and better asset class for its lenders.
Once an eligible borrower applies for a loan, the LOBOT (chat bot) automatically maps the loan inquiry with one/multiple lenders, who in turn rely on the evaluation outcome and initiate loan disbursement within five minutes to the respective borrower’s bank account.
“ATL is not a price discovery platform but a decision-enabling platform as all charges and eligibility of a borrower are pre-defined by our system; hence, decision making at ATL becomes a child’s play. It is as simple as investing in equity markets through mutual funds, when it comes to lenders, and drawing money from an ATM, when it comes to borrowers,” explains Keerthi.
ATL has also applied to the RBI and is in the process of seeking NBFC P2P license.
For the financial year 2017-18, it is clocking revenues worth Rs 300 lakh, with total loans disbursed around Rs 39.8 crores. It also claims to have a default rate of less than 0.23 percent.
ATL’s revenue model is a flat percentage on the loan amount, and a small percentage on ROI earned by the lender on the successful closure of the loan deal.
The way ahead
It claims to be a profitable fintech startup. It had raised approximately Rs 2.25 crore through angel investors in August 2016, and recently, it raised a Series A round from strategic investor Spice Digital wherein they infused equity up to $4 million.
SME financing has traditionally been limited to businesses that have solid financial credentials or assets to back the loan. However, startups such as LendingKart, IndiaLends, Faircent, Kudos Finance and Investment, and Capital Float are making it easier for SMEs to receive loans by leveraging technology and alternate data sources to underwrite.
Talking about its differentiator, Keerthi says, “While we have many unique offerings for our customers, two most critical differentiators are eligible borrowers accessing loan 24/7 and no upfront charges until the lender sees his/her returns.”
With backing from Spice Group, and RBI clearance on regulatory aspects, ATL is now working towards reaching a monthly disbursement milestone of Rs 100 crore by December. “We plan to bring more than 10,000 lenders together to experience the power of wealth via ATL,” says Keerthi.