SME loan platform Ziploan raises Rs 90 Cr in a round led by SAIF Partners

SME financing platform, Ziploan, announced that it has raised Rs 90 crore in its Series B financing round led by SAIF Partners with existing investors Matrix Partners India, Waterbridge Ventures and Whiteboard Capital also participating in the round.

With this new round of funding, the company has raised a total of Rs 320 crore of equity and debt funding till date and plans to mobilise additional Rs 250 crore more from debt investors.

Started in 2015, Ziploan is a digital lender that provides small ticket business loans of up to Rs 5 lakh to micro enterprises and SMEs.

Currently, Ziploan has co-lending and debt partnerships with leading banks and NBFCs such as IDFC First Bank, IndusInd Bank, Northern Arc, MAS Finance and Caspian Finance among others, allowing it to build a highly profitable and capital efficient business at scale.

 ZipLoan is currently operational in NCR, Mumbai, Indore, Lucknow, Dehradun and Jaipur.

Commenting on the investment, Kshitij Puri, Co-Founder and CEO, Ziploan, said,

“Our mission at Ziploan is to be the harbinger of small business lending revolution. With our focus on granular behaviours of different businesses, we have been able to scale up Ziploan by 10x in last 12 months, having disbursed Rs 150 Cr with a quality loan portfolio. We are glad to have investors such as SAIF Partners, Matrix Partners and Waterbridge participate in this round and help us achieve our vision.”

According to the company, Ziploan’s proprietary risk assessment engine called ZipScore helps it to reduce operation cost.

Shalabh Singhal, Co-Founder and COO, Ziploan said,

“We at Ziploan believe that small business owners are the real change makers in India and by solving their biggest pain point i.e. access to organised finance, Ziploan can create a very big impact in the society. Ziploan has developed proprietary technology and machine learning powered applications to serve this segment at scale. We feel inspired partnering with SAIF, Matrix and Waterbridge who have helped build many successful Institutions in the past.”  

Mridul Arora, Managing Director, SAIF Partners, said,

"We are excited to partner with the Ziploan in their mission to make small business lending efficient and hassle-free. We were impressed by the team's ability to demonstrate strong growth, capital efficiency and robust book quality driven by their proprietary ZipScore. We are confident the team will continue to scale and execute on their vision of being the preferred lender for micro SMEs'

"We partnered with Kshitij and Shalabh at the very beginning and it is gratifying to see the growth and scale into which the company has evolved. We remain impressed by ZipLoan’s approach to solving the tough MSME lending problem. We believe it’s still Day One for the company and the best is yet to come." said Sarbvir Singh, Managing Partner, WaterBridge Ventures

“We believe in Ziploan’s online-offline approach of honing a proprietary ZipScore coupled with low cost operations and acute collection focus. This combination enables scale while accounting for the reality of working with Indian SMEs. As early investors in Ziploan we are privileged to partner with Kshitij and Shalabh and believe in their vision of building a SME focused financial services company”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India.