Pune-based digital lending startup Healthfin has raised ₹3.43 crores ($500,000) in pre-series A funding from Axilor Ventures, Sprout Venture Partners, along with participation from Manish Khera, ex-CEO of Airtel Payments Bank.
The funds raised will be used to scale up operations to new cities, partner with more hospitals and boost its technology platform.
Healthfin, a technology-enabled platform helps medical patients to get best deals from its partner banks to finance their medical treatments. It was founded by Parvaiz Hussain, in partnership with Sonia Basu in 2016.
“We are targeting nine cities from around six presently within the next six months and also (plan to) treble the number of hospital partners from around 100 now. We have 40 people now, we will double the manpower as well.” said co-founder Parvaiz Hussain, Healthfin.
The startup has partnered with a number of hospitals, banks and other lending partners to enable quicker disbursal of funds directly to the hospital. So far it has tie-ups with 9 lending partners including ICICI Bank, TATA Capital, Fullerton, and LoanTap.
Healthfin claims to provide loans up to ₹50 lakhs, along with providing a 90-day cashless interest-free loan. The interest on the loan beyond the 90 day period is 1.5% per month, extendable to five years.
Presently, the loan approvals can take anywhere from 15 minutes to one day, depending on the type of applicants. With the improvement of its technology platform, the startup is looking to bring this duration down to 5 minutes.
Healthfin was part of Axilor Ventures fifth accelerator batch last year. Axilor Ventures has made some quality investments in India across various sectors including healthtech, artificial intelligence, fintech, and IoT.
Recently many startups in the healthcare domain have raised funds including MyHealthcare, HealthSignz, along with HealthPlix. Other startups competing with Healthfin in the digital lending space include LetsMD, Monexo Fintech, IndiaLends, Faircent, LendingKart, and PaisaBazaar among many others.