Azim Premji’s Premji Invest and South Korea’s Mirae Asset Venture participated in KreditBee’s Series C round. This had investments made to the tune of $75 million or Rs. 544 crores in total. Along with these marquee investors, Arkam Ventures and Alpine Capital also took part in the round.
The parent company of KreditBee, Finnov, has steadily lowered the count of Chinese investors in the entity, with this round. This now stands at 10% as compared to 40% previously. Earlier investor and smartphone giant Xiaomi has already exited the business at the end. Other investors like Kunlun and Shunwei Capital have also cut down their business stakes.
Finnov was established in March 2016, and owns Krazybee. This is an NBFC that arrived in May 2018, as a full-stack platform for digital lending, targeted toward young and aspirational professionals. It has loan tenures between two and fifteen months while offering consumer durable and personal loans up to a sum of Rs. 2 lakh.
Shunwei and Xiaomi invested $8 million in earlier funding rounds for the company back in 2017. ICICI Bank and Arkam Ventures also pumped in $43 million in total equity with the Series B round. The company wishes to offer credit solutions to 180 million+ customers who have not received the same officially till now. This was outlined by its CEO, Madhusudan E. The funds will help the company grow towards fulfilling that objective, according to him.
The funds, as per Premji Invest partner, Atul Gupta, will help in the formalization of the distribution structure for loans in India. He also stated that KreditBee’s goal of formalizing the entire credit empowerment structure for NTC (new to credit) consumers, and their professionalism, were delightful for the investment firm. He also highlighted their technology-led underwriting.
According to Ashish Dave, CEO of Mirae Asset Venture Investments in India, KreditBee’s major plus point is the ability to verify and scrutinize new loan applications. A good credit assessment of consumers with alternative points of data is vital for NTCs. He also stated that this is visible through the ability of the platform to offer loans on a larger scale. The company already has 1,200+ employees with a 20 million consumer base. It is already foraying into insurance and secured loan offerings in the future, as per reports.