[Funding alert] Avanti Finance raises $15M from existing investors

Avanti Finance, the technology-led NBFC, has further raised $15 million in Series A2 round from existing investors Oikocredit, Nomura, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Dr K R Shroff Foundation.

With this, Avanti Finance completed its Series A and debt funding round, raising a total of $41 million.

Avanti will use the funds to strengthen its deep tech platform, bolster data science, enhance its product suite, and expand the team to enable access to affordable credit and financial empowerment to unserved and underserved households in India.

Rahul Gupta, CEO of Avanti, said, “The Avanti team is excited and ready to accelerate our mission. We are grateful to our board and investors for reposing their faith in our unique business model to democratise credit to the next 100 million households and make every loan an impact story.”

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Avanti is present in 21 states covering over 200 districts and aims to expand further. It also aims to strengthen its ecosystem, to partner with mission-aligned social enterprises and foundations, financial institutions, business correspondents, and agritech innovators across the country, who can leverage its platform to serve users in a digital-first manner providing for scale and sustainability.

The company has built a digital platform that facilitates a paperless, presence-less, and cashless approach to lending that will reduce costs and friction for unserved and underserved segments, especially in rural India. 

Avanti partners with a diverse set of organisations with strong roots in local communities to offer loan products that are hyperlocal and focused on livelihood sustainability. It uses its own balance sheet and partners with other capital providers to enable financial inclusion.

Data suggests that only 80-90 million households in India are a part of the formal credit system. This means that the rest — over 150 million households — are dependent on non-institutional sources, such as local moneylenders or acquaintances.