Working capital loan facilitating platform for small and medium businesses CredAble disbursed record USD 3 billion (Rs 22,500 crore) during the financial year 2021-22, and expects to double the amount in next fiscal on more customer acquisitions and high demand for short-term business loans, co-founder and CEO Nirav Choksi said.
The company said it disbursed a record USD 3 billion working capital loans to 1,50,000 cash-strapped small businesses in the last 12 months.
The credit disbursement comes at a time when the MSME sector, which contributes 40 per cent to India’s total exports, continues to find itself in financial distress with only 16 per cent of them being eligible for formal credit, the company said.
“We saw growth coming in primarily from two perspectives. One, we added a lot of new customers, and we also saw several new banks adopting to the platform as a platform of choice. Both of these factors helped significantly ramp up the platform.
“Very importantly, we launched a new platform for upscale focussed around small businesses. We have been seeing a huge amount of new traction and small businesses requiring working capital also,” Choksi said.
Businesses want to ensure adequate access to working capital loan. Such loans range from as small as Rs 5 lakh to as big as Rs 50 crore. So a combination of all these factors led to this kind of growth on CredAble platform, he added.
“We expect to double the disbursal amount in the next fiscal year. We are experiencing tremendous growth in upscale… We are adding 15,000 new customers every week. Going by this rate, the user base count will also more than double. We will be having about 500,000 users by next fiscal,” Choksi said.
The Mumbai-headquartered technology based loan disbursal platform has completed five years into operations this month, and is on a “very rapid” expansion mode by partnering more customers.
“For the next 12 months, we will be focussed on very aggressive growth. Ours is a very short-term working capital loan facilitating platform, based on receivables. The credit risk is very well-managed because we partner with very large banks and vendors,” said the co-founder.
CredAble provides infrastructure for lending towards short-term loans. Working capital loan requirement is a very large opportunity for the company, Choksi added.
Also Read: India received 65 pc more FDI during Modi regime against 10 years of UPA rule: FM
The company has over 30 banks and NBFCs on its platform, which include HDFC Bank, DBS, Deutsche Bank, Kotak, Axis, RBL, Muthoot Finance, Fullerton India and Dhanvarsha Finvest, among others.
