Decentro acquires SaaS platform for debt recovery, Neowise

Y Combinator-backed Decentro, a banking and payments API infrastructure startup, has acquired a Mumbai-based SaaS platform for debt collection—Neowise Technologies—for an undisclosed amount in a cash and stock deal.

The deal will allow Decentro to add debt collections as a part of its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) stack that it offers to banks, NBFCs, and fintechs to stitch together payments and lending workflows.

Decentro will acquire Neowise’s debt collections dashboard, which will continue to be offered via the latter as per the regular sale process. Neowise is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Decentro's India arm. The two teams will continue to function independently, the company said in an email response.

“We observed a crucial aspect of streamlining loan repayments when we introduced our digital lending API stack. Moreover, the collections process for numerous NBFCs and lenders relied heavily on manual operations,” said Rohit Taneja, Founder and CEO of Decentro. 

“While developing solutions internally have been our forte since our inception, we recognised the need to establish a deeper partnership that enhances our suite and empowers existing industry players. Neowise, with its comprehensive loan collections suite, seamlessly aligns with our vision of empowering the lending sector,” he added. 

Founded in 2020 by Taneja and Pratik Daudkhane, the Bengaluru-based fintech startup raised $4.7 million in Series A funding in November from investors, including Singapore and US-based Rapyd Ventures, Leonis VC from Europe, and Uncorrelated Ventures. 

Angle investors Kunal Shah (CRED), Lalit Keshre (Groww), Beerud Sheth (Gupshup), and Pratekk Agarwaal (GrowthCap Ventures) also participated in the funding round. 

Within three years of launch in India, Decentro says it has offered its stack to more than 500 companies and has five major banks as partners.

According to Decentro, it is "hitting a quarter-on-quarter growth rate of nearly 50% across multiple sectors, including consumer platforms, NBFCs, Loan Service Providers (LSPs), Prepaid Issuers (PPIs), neobanks, and wealth managers."

The company competes with the likes of M2P Fintech, Signzy,Falcon,Cashfree Paymentsand Setu (acquired by Pine Labs), in the API infrastructure business.

“This acquisition combines Neowise’s expertise in debt recovery technology with Decentro’s comprehensive full-stack payments and banking APIs, which enable banks, fintechs, and NBFCs to digitise their workflows across the entire value chain," said Rohit Ramachandran, CEO and Co-founder of Neowise Technologies. "This partnership allows us to tap into Decentro’s extensive expertise and reach. We look forward to scaling along with the Decentro team.”

(The story was updated with a revised list of competitors)