Alok Mittal, the Indian entrepreneur who was the chief of Canaan Partners in India, has once again turned entrepreneur. His startup, named Indifi Technologies, which aims to solve credit access issues for small business, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Accel Partners and Elevar Equity.
Other investors who participated in this funding round include Pramod Bhasin (founder and former CEO of Genpact), Rajan Anandan (vice president & managing director, Google, South East Asia & India), Gaurav Dalmia, Abhishek Goyal, Gagan Hasteer and Arun Tadanki.
The five month old startup was founded by Alok Mittal, Siddharth Mahanot and Sundeep Sahi, Indifi streamlines credit assessment processes through automated data collection, processing and analysis. The company aims to solve credit access issues for small business while providing a zero operating cost model for lenders, through automated data collection, processing and analysis.
Lending products are integrated with the business cash flows and transactional linkages in that segment. Currently, Indifi is working in three business segments – travel, transportation and retail sectors. It works with two financial institutions who lend through the Indifi platform.
Prior to setting up Indifi Technologies, Alok Mittal setup and ran Canaan Partners’ operations in India, which is investing in technology and internet startups. His earlier ventured named JobsAhead.com was acquired by Monster.com, an online recruitment firm.
Soon after he quit his job at Canaan Partners, the firm eventually exited India and its entire portfolio was acquired by JP Morgan Asset Management this year.
Commenting on the launch of Indifi, Alok Mittal said
MSMEs contribute to nearly 38% of the country’s GDP, but at the same time, suffer from $380B formal debt financing gap….we seek to improve access, reduce the overall credit operations cost by 50-60%, and enable disbursements within a mere 4 days from application.
This seems like a good time for the company as the Indian MSMEs, which accounts for more than 80% of the country’s total industrial enterprises, and contributes about 45% to manufacturing output, still continues to face significant hurdles in accessing capital.
