Axis Bank to acquire over 5% stake in fintech startup CredAble

Axis Bank has announced to acquire over 5% stake in fintech platform CredAble for Rs 55 crore ($7 million approx). The deal is expected to be completed by September 2022. 

In an exchange filing, the bank said it will acquire 8,921 equity shares, equivalent to 5.09 percent of face value of Rs 10 each for Rs 55 crore in CredAble.

Overall, CredAble received total $9 million via an equity infusion from Axis Bank and its existing investor OAKS Asset Management.

Founded in 2017 by Nirav Choksi and Ram Kewalramani, CredAble enables working capital financing across corporate ecosystem of vendors, distributors, dealers, and retailors through its network of financial institutions via its proprietary technology (platform) as well as licensing its technology to financial institutions as a co-branding solution. 

The platform competes with Lendingkart, Razorpay, Kinara Capital, Indifi, and others to offer working capital solutions to small businesses as well. CredAble has so far raised $51.8 million in funding from OAKS Asset Management, Plutus Wealth Management, V Ocean Investments, and others. 

It has a total income of Rs 8.35 crore in 2021-22 as compared to Rs 2.46 crore the previous year.

Commenting on the announcement, Ram Kewalramani, Co-founder and Managing Director, CredAble, said, "Our focus for the next few quarters is to continue accelerating our growth in providing working capital solutions to our customers and to be a strategically important partner to our financial institution participants. This investment will also help expand our BaaS solutions in global markets as well as to penetrate deeper into the SME ecosystem in India through our UpScale platform."

The co-founders had informed that the platform has disbursed about $3 billion to cash-strapped 1,50,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the past 12 months. The disbursements were enabled via capital sourced from over 30 financial partners including private banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), and large multinationals. The company said it disburses working capital at a monthly run rate of approximately $450-500 million.

Meanwhile, in the recently concluded investors' meet, Amitabh Chaudhry, MD and CEO at Axis Bank said, "Formalisation of MSME lending and high contribution of MSME segment in India’s GDP offer tremendous opportunity. We continue to invest in the MSME space, extending our distribution and service footprint across India."