Indifi Technologies, a fin-tech startup which enables small businesses to secure loans, has raised $10 million in its Series B round of funding. The round was led by Omidyar Network, with participation from existing investors Accel Partners and Elevar Equity.
With the new funds coming in, the company is planning to scale its technology platform, expand the workforce, create new loan products and invest in partnerships with data vendors.
Commenting on the investment, Smita Aggarwal, director of investments at Omidyar Network, said,
Indifi is a unique platform which has lenders on one side and borrowers on the other side. It smartly uses data to improve the credit assessment and the cost of discovery of these MSMEs.
In the MSME segment, which is a very large segment in India, there exists a huge credit gap. There are five crore MSMEs in India and it is estimated that the credit gap to these MSMEs is about Rs25 lakh crore. So we are talking about a really large addressable market.
Indifi, founded in 2015, offers unsecured loans to MSMEs in select industry segments through its partner NBFCs and banks. It gathers its own data on the business and credit profile of an applicant and connects it to the most relevant financing partners. Based on its data and accompanying analytics, the lender can choose to finance the loan.
Alok Mittal, co-founder of Indifi Technologies, said,
We go into specific industry verticals and create specific lending solutions in those verticals. Now this whole application goes to whichever lender that it matches with. The final decision whether to give the loan or not depends on the lender. We enable the loan decision by bringing data and analytics together in a segment-specific manner.
The platform caters to businesses that are underserved by organized lenders. It also manages the entire loan cycle of the borrower. On the lending side, it has tie-ups with four NBFCs, including Edelweiss Retail Finance, India Infoline, and two other banks.
The company claims that so far, it has dispersed over 1,000 loans worth Rs 50 crore. It charges a fee from the lender which is received in parts throughout the life of the loan.
In this segment, Indifi Technologies competes with Mumbai-based SMEcorner and NBFC start-ups such as Capital Float and NeoGrowth.
