Lendingkart has announced a Series C round of funding of Rs 565 crore led by Singapore’s Fullerton Financial Holdings. Other participants included existing investors like Sistema Asia Fund, Bertelsmann India Investment, Mayfield India, India Quotient, and Saama Capital.
With the latest round of funds, the digital lending startup’s total equity and debt funding have gone up to $173 million (Rs 1,129 crore). Lendingkart will be looking to use the funds raised to its technological and analytical capabilities. In addition, the group is also looking to expand its credit product offerings SMEs.
Lendingkart also signed a memorandum of understanding with Fullerton India Capital Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fullerton, as part of the transaction, to collaborate on potential initiatives that will support each of the respective businesses.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Fullerton as they bring deep domain experience in the rapidly growing financial services space in India and globally. We look forward to leveraging their insights as we build a leading platform for digital lending in India. We would also like to thank our existing investors for continuing to support us in our growth journey,” said Harshvardhan Lunia, chief executive of Lendingkart Technologies, in a statement.
Lending exclusively to MSMEs, the Ahmedabad-based startup’s investors include Bertelsmann India Investment, Darrin Capital Management, Sistema Asia Fund and India Quotient, among others. The company also runs a non-banking finance (NBFC) unit called Lendingkart Finance, wherein they raise money from financial institutions and banks and further lend it out to their cutsomers.
The fintech startup has previously borrowed from various NBFCs like Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd and Yes Bank Ltd and also from public sector lenders like State Bank of India (SBI).
The company claims to have evaluated more than 100,000 loan applications since inception and disbursed over 20,000 loans across more than 950 cities. So far, they have disbursed loans to some 13,000 small businesses and enterprises.
Lendingkart evaluates creditworthiness of potential customers using big data analytics and machine learning. The factors they take into consideration are financial health, compliance to determine creditworthiness and comparative market performance.
