Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Digital lending platform FlexiLoans.com on Tuesday announced a nearly $90 million fundraising in its Series B round from Denmark-based private equity company MAJ Invest, UK-based fintech investor Fasanara Capital and family offices of Dr Harry Banga and Yogesh Mahansaria. Existing shareholders including veteran banker Sanjay Nayar also participated in the round. The deal marks Fasanara Capital’s first SME fintech investment in India and MAJ Invest’s third investment this year. The latest round comprised around $28 million in equity infusion and the balance in debt commitment.
FlexiLoans said the round will support its focus on technology development and to more than double its MSME book via its co-lending, buy-now-pay-later and supply chain finance platforms. The company provides loans to small businesses and has disbursed over Rs 1,700 crores to MSMEs across India through digital originations.
Having built technology assets for platform lending, pricing, and customer journeys it will continue to invest in cutting edge technology to strengthen its customer journey automation, risk management & analytics capabilities.
“We are very excited to have institutional players join us in our mission to help small businesses grow in India. Their experience in developing global fintech companies will help us in creating better products as well as organizational building,” said Deepak Jain, Co-Founder, Flexiloans.com in a statement.
“Embedded financing to merchants in the ecommerce ecosystem is a sweet spot that we invest in across the world and FlexiLoans.com has a strong product led partnerships in India for the same,” said Francesco Filia, CEO, Fasanara Capital
FlexiLoans.com said it had previously raised around $20 million in India’s largest seed funding and Series A investment led by Nayar and other bankers. The firm is currently one of the largest embedded finance players in India with more than 120 ecosystem partners including e-commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, Myntra, and others for financing sellers/vendors associated with these platforms, the company added.
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“The FlexiLoans team has grown the business with the right principles of quality credit underwriting, granular customer sourcing via strong partnerships and top-notch technology infrastructure. We are excited to back them again for their next and important leg of transition to a leading digital lender with an eventual path to digital banking in the future,” said Sanjay Nayar, Founder – Sorin Investment.
The company said it disburses over Rs 100 crore monthly and plans to double this run rate over the next year, with its co-lending platform contributing a significant share of growth.
Digital lending is among the fastest-growing fintech segments in India that grew exponentially from $9 billion in 2012 to nearly $110 billion dollars in 2019 and is likely to touch around $350 billion dollars by 2023, according to Statista. Other digital lending players enabling credit access for MSMEs in India included Indifi, U GRO Capital, Lendingkart, NeoGrowth, and more.