Lendingkart, a fintech startup, based out of Ahmedabad, has raised ₹212 crore in a fresh equity round, led by Fullerton Financial Holdings, Bertelsmann India Investments and India Quotient.
The startup will use the infuse capital to expand lending bases, deepen Lendingkart Group‘s reach to small and underserved micro enterprises and further strengthen its technological and analytics capabilities.
“We are pleased with the momentum in our business and this equity will help us meet the growth opportunities we are seeing. Micro and small businesses represent a vibrant yet underserved segment of the Indian economy. The support of all of our customers, investors and employees is empowering us to build the leading financial services platform for this segment,” Harshvardhan Lunia, co-founder and managing director of Lendingkart, said.
Lendingkart was founded by an ex-banker Harshvardhan Lunia, along with former ISRO scientist Mukul Sachan in 2014. It provides a digital lending platform that offers loans for SMEs in India to grow their business.
It uses technology and analytics tools, to access the creditworthiness of small businesses quickly and accurately by analyzing thousands of data points across various data sources.
“Over the past year, Lendingkart’s business has seen robust growth and continues to exhibit great potential. We are delighted to continue partnering with Lendingkart who has been at the forefront of making working capital digitally accessible for MSMEs, as India continues its journey towards becoming a digitally enabled country,” Yeo Hong Ping, president, Fullerton Financial Holding, said.
Lendingkart is currently present in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Kolkata but have a service reach across India. The company’s consolidated revenue grew to Rs 91.8 crore last fiscal from Rs 35.6 crore in FY17.
Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director, Bertelsmann India Investments said, “Digital lending is revolutionising access to capital for MSMEs. With focused efforts of the Government and technological advances such as big data, digital lending has set the stage for disruption with greater formalisation, faster capital disbursements and vastly improved customer experience. We are proud to be a part of this incredible journey with Lendingkart as it continues to demonstrate market leadership in this space.”
While, other startups in the similar space include Capital Float, NeoGrowth, India Lends and among others.