[Funding alert] Data intelligence startup Crediwatch raises $3.2M in Series A round

Bengaluru-based data intelligence startup Crediwatch, on Tuesday, said it had raised $3.2 million from its Series A round, led by ARTIS Labs. The round also saw participation from San Francisco-based Abstract Ventures. 

Crediwatch had earlier raised $1.6 million from Modern India Limited, Family Offices of Mr VK Jatia, Contrarian Vriddhi Fund, Vaibhav Domkundwar from Better Capital, Mekin Maheshwari of Flipkart, and Pithambar Gona, former MD of Blackstone Pvt Equity Asia.

With this round, the total equity raised by Crediwatch stands at about $5 million to date.

According to the startup, the funds will be used to accelerate the R&D for its product as well as to scale and further commercialise the platform. The funding will also enable the company to look at expanding the use case of its platform to other areas of the corporate supply chain, apart from just financial services.

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Started in September 2016 by Meghna Suryakumar and Sandeep Anandampillai, Crediwatch is a ‘data insights-as-a-service’ company providing lenders and businesses with actionable credit intelligence on private entities. The platform does this without any human intervention by deploying the latest practical AI and other technology tools, providing the most reliable and comprehensive real-time inputs.

Speaking about the platform, Meghna, Co-founder and CEO of Crediwatch, said,

“The ecosystem needs a dynamic business information exchange to create transparency and continuous monitoring of borrowers to weed out bad cases early. Our vision is to reimagine SME credit by measuring trust through verifiable data, insights and good behaviour.”

With this funding, Crediwatch has also launched a ‘Dynamic Trust Score’, derived from millions of data points that are extracted and analysed across thousands of formal and alternative sources to help lenders assess borrowers and monitor them in close to real-time. 

Sharing his insights, Stuart Peterson, General Partner with Artis Ventures, commented,

“The increasing digitisation of business data against the backdrop of a failure of conventional credit rating and underwriting methods provides a unique opportunity to create a scalable business using AI/ML to provide unprecedented insights. These are massive trends that are just now beginning to play out within India, and Crediwatch finds itself ideally positioned to lead this digital revolution.”

At present, the startup has close to 20 clients, more than half of whom are top financial institutions such as SBI, Karur Vysya Bank, Capital Float, RBL Bank, and Aditya Birla Finance Ltd.

In a statement, Ramtin Naimi, Partner of Abstract Ventures, said,

“We have already seen various algorithm-based lending models trying to address the issues pertaining to digital lending, but the lack of a data utility platform for the industry has created a gap. Crediwatch is one of the few businesses that are committed to addressing this gap and we are delighted to offer our support.”

Crediwatch has provided insights on more than 50,000 businesses and assisted a loan portfolio worth $7 billion to date. The startup also plans to open up its platform for developers to further innovate on the existing product, around next year.

(Edited by Athirupa Geetha Manichandar)

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