[Funding alert] BASIC Home Loan raises $3.5M led by Venture Catalysts, Gruhas Proptech

BASIC Home Loan, a Gurugram-based fintech startup, has raised $3.5 million in a Series A round of funding led by Venture Catalysts (VCats) and Gruhas Proptech, an investment platform of Zerodha Founder Nikhil Kamath and Abhijeet Pai of Puzzolana Group.

Others who participated in this round include Earlsfield Capital and Good Capital, along with existing investor Picus Capital. There were also investments from angels and family offices which include Haldiram’s, LetsVenture syndicate.

The promoters of a few real estate developers also participated in this round.

Abhijeet Pai of Gruhas Proptech said, "We were impressed by the way BASIC Home Loan has used the Phygital approach to keep the cost variable in order to achieve positive unit economics, that too for small-ticket affordable home loans, at which even the biggest of the financial institutions struggle."

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BASIC Home Loan was co-founded by Atul Monga and Kalyan Josyula in 2020. The founders have previous experience of working in companies such as PolicyBazaar, Ola, Lazada, Credit Suisse, and Rocket Internet.

Co-founder and CEO Atul Monga said, “We are working towards making home loans simpler, transparent and BASIC for low-income households. We have had a great start in our journey, creating a strong distribution network in affordable housing hotspots in 15 cities in the first 12 months. We would further strengthen our distribution across 40+ cities along with digitization of credit processes during the next phase.”

The startup is developing a platform for automating home loans for middle and low-income households in India. It aims to disburse over Rs 6,000 crore of home loans over the next 18 months.

In its first 12 months, it claims to have disbursed Rs 400 crore of loans in over 15 cities. It plans to achieve a monthly loan disbursal run rate of Rs 200 crore and hire more than 300 people by March 2022.

BASIC Home Loan has more than 25 bank partners on board right now. Nearly 25 percent of loans disbursed through it are with Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojna applications and 30 percent for construction of new housing units.