Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
money

Ziploan, an online lending startup has announced that it has secured around ₹20 crore ($3 million) in its Series A funding round which was led by Matrix Partners.

The company also witnessed participation of its existing investors Waterbridge Ventures and Whiteboard Capital in the current funding round.

With new capital coming in, the company is now planning to expand its area of operation and enhance its technology platform. The funds will also enable the SME lending platform to increase its loan book size.

A part of the current funding round will also be used to hire 25 more people to the team. It current has a team of around 45 people.

Commenting on this new investment round, Matrix Partners India MD Vikram Vaidyanathan said,

With over 40 Mn SMEs, SME-lending is a large opportunity, but with tough execution challenges. We believe a cautious, technology-led approach can bring down underwriting and sourcing costs enough to serve the SMEs at smaller ticket sizes.

ZipLoan co-founder and CEO Kshitij Puri stated,

We were operational in Delhi and started business recently in Indore. We plan to expand to other tier-II cities over the next one year and build a ₹200-crore loan book within that time. We will invest in our proprietary risk assessment engine with digital data points, called ZipScore, which automates credit decisions.

The startup was founded in September 2015 by Kshitij Puri and Shalabh Singhal. It offers collateral free short-term loans to Medium and Small and Medium Enterprises and currently has presence in New Delhi/NCR and Indore.

In October 2016, the company secured an undisclosed amount in funding from GrowX Ventures. Prior to that, Ziploan had also raised funding from Sarvbir Singh in its seed funding round.

According to a Nasscom report, the Indian fin-tech market is forecasted to touch $2.4 billion by the year 2020, from the current $1.2 billion.

By Jeet