Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Small small business lender Lendingkart, which delivers small business loans and working capital loans, has raised $15 million debt for its NBFC arm Lendingkart Finance from the Netherlands-based entrepreneurial improvement bank FMO that manages funds for the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Affairs of the Dutch government. The investment has been raised by means of non-convertible debentures and has taken the company’s cumulative exposure to $19 million with this deal. “With the new funding, Lendingkart has targeted to reach out to over 5,000 new MSMEs with a focus on women entrepreneurs and small businesses. The new normal is about sustainability and stable business for which Lendingkart has raised this debt to empower MSMEs realise their plans and achieve the Bharat financial inclusion goal,” Harshvardhan Lunia, Co-founder and CEO, Lendingkart told TheSpuzz Online.
Even as India seasoned one of the strictest lockdowns due to the Covid pandemic impacting companies especially MSMEs with restricted working capital out there and access to finance, there is no government information out there for the quantity of Covid-hit units. While a number of schemes have been announced by the Centre to support Covid-hit MSMEs recover, “however, as MSMEs are there in both formal and informal sector, data regarding temporary or permanent closure of the units are not maintained by the Government of India in Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME),” MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari had mentioned in a written reply to a query in the Rajya Sabha.
Lendingkart, which has disbursed more than 1 lakh loans to more than 91,000 MSMEs so far by means of its NBFC arm, will deploy the capital raised towards expanding the attain of its monetary goods across about one hundred sub-industries in the MSME segment in India. “By FY22, Lendingkart has planned to onboard around 1.25 lakhs MSMEs on its portfolio driving the most-watched segment for an accelerated growth,” added Lunia. The corporation is targeting 40 per cent development more than pre-Covid monetary year and will be launching important goods this year, he mentioned. Its investor FMO supports sustainable private sector development in establishing nations and emerging markets.
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The total fundraising by Lendingkart prior to the existing round stood at $242.5 million with investment from Mayfield Fund, India Quotient, Saama Capital, Alteria Capital, Bertelsmann India, Fullerton Financial Holding, other individuals as per Crunchbase. The corporation had acquired the on the net lending marketplace for individual loans KountMoney in 2016.
The investment raised by Lendingkart also comes amid the government’s crackdown on lending or loan apps providing immediate credit on the net. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had not too long ago blocked 27 lending apps beneath Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The facts was shared by MoS Finance Ministry Anurag Singh Thakur in the Lok Sabha earlier this week with respect to the government’s move towards dealing with fraud Chinese lending apps operating in India. However, the names of the blocked loan apps weren’t shared in his reply. The digital lending worth in India had jumped from $33 billion in FY15 to $150 billion in FY20 and is most likely to develop to the $350-billion mark by FY23, according to Statista.