Lendingkart Finance raises Rs 300 Cr in debt funding
Non-deposit-taking NBFC Lendingkart Finance today announced that it has raised Rs 300 crore in debt funding.
The funding was led by Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC, which infused Rs 150 crore in the firm, while the other Rs 150 crore was pumped in by another mutual funds giant, which the company chose not to disclose.
The Rs 300 crore new influx of funds marks Lendingkart Finance’s maiden non-convertible debentures (NCD) transaction with mutual funds. The freshly raised amount will be used towards growing the loan book and financing a greater number of MSMEs, the company said.
A part of the Lendingkart Group, LendingKart Finance Ltd is a sister concern to fintech startup LendingKart Technologies Pvt. Ltd. which closed a $87-million Series-C round earlier in January, one of the largest in the SME lending space, led by Singapore’s Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte Ltd (FFH), a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.
As the group looks to expand the reach to over 1,200 cities across India, this debt funding will be used to widen its offerings to MSMEs countrywide. As of today, Lendingkart Finance has disbursed over 28,000 loans to more than 21,000 MSMEs across 26 diverse sectors.
In a statement, Harshvardhan Lunia, CEO and Co-founder, Lendingkart Technologies said,
“We have a clear vision to expend quick and hassle-free loans to MSMEs across the country that have difficulty securing loans from traditional sources, thereby, effectively empowering them with working capital to scale considerably. It’s an exciting opportunity for us to be working with two most sought-after mutual funds companies for furthering the mission of creating a healthier and more conducive environment for the MSME ecosystem.”
Lendingkart uses about 10,000+ data variables to determine factors like financial health, comparative market performance, social reliability as well as compliance. Once the evaluation process is completed, the loan amount is disbursed to the deserving borrower within 72 hours from the time of application.
Till date, over one million MSMEs have reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit requirement.
While speaking to YourStory in January, Harshvardhan said that the company was looking to deploy loans with bigger ticket sizes of Rs 10 lakh-15 lakh for a tenure of 12-14 months this year. The company also claimed to have disbursed close to 20,000 loans across 950 cities, until now. This equated to a customer base of 13,000 SMEs.
In FY 2018-19, the firm is looking to build its loan book to Rs 2,500 crore.
This year, Lendingkart’s competitor Bengaluru-based Capital Float also raised $22 million in equity funding from ecommerce behemoth Amazon Inc. The investment marked the close of Capital Float’s Series-C round, standing at $67 million.
Earlier this month, technology-based SME lending platform OfBusiness announced that it has raised Rs 200 crore in Series-C financing, led by Creation Investments and Falcon Edge, with existing investors Matrix Partners and Zodius Capital participating in the round. This took the total fundraise by the OfBusiness team to Rs 500 crore, till date.
