KreditBee Secures $75 Mn In Series C Funding From Premji Invest, Mirae Asset And Alpine The funds will be used to expand its loan product offerings and strengthen its technology stack of AI/ML-based risk algorithm

Bengaluru-headquartered fintech lending startup KreditBee on Monday said to have concluded its Series C equity round worth $75 million from Premji Invest, Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund, Alpine Capital, and Arkam Ventures consisting of both primary and secondary investment.

The current round of fund raise is expected to support the company in its effort to fuel financial inclusion and drive credit uptake in the economy especially for the unserved and underserved segment of the population.

"We started with a dream to help the unserved and underserved segment who has always found it difficult to enter the formal lending sector, either due to lengthy offline processes or traditional underwriting methods. With a larger portfolio of loan products, our objective is to provide credit to over 180 Million New-to-Credit customers who were not provided formal credit earlier. This investment would help us take more positive steps towards achieving that," mentioned Madhusudan E, co-founder, and chief executive officer, KreditBee.

Registered in March 2016, the company currently has over 1200 employees and a user base of over 20 million with over 4 million credit customers.

The platform plans to diversify its product offering by venturing into digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans, and credit lines.

"We are impressed by the vision of KreditBee to formalize the path towards credit enablement for new-to-credit customers, their skilled team, and responsible tech-enabled underwriting, and are pleased to partner with them in their next stage of growth," said Atul Gupta, partner, Premji Invest.

The app provides a unified platform where multiple banks and NBFCs provide credit to the customers as direct lending partners. Along with the group NBFC, some other lending partners on the platform are Fullerton India Credit Company Limited, IIFL, Incred, Vivriti Capital Private Limited, AU Small Finance Bank, and Northern Arc Capital Limited.

The company raises debt from various large-scale and small private sector banks in India, some of which are ICICI Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, Bank of Baroda, HSBC Bank, Catholic Syrian Bank, Jana Bank, and Yes Bank.

"The large scale at which the platform is able to disburse loans to customers showcases not just the stability and strength of its tech stack, but also a very appropriate credit scoring of customers using alternative data points, which forms a key for new-to-credit customers," commented Ashish Dave, chief executive officer, Mirae Asset Venture Investments (India).

The company has digitized the entire underwriting process which can be owed to the massive use of AI/ML in the assessment of a user. Along with the algorithms, their internally developed five different proprietary scorecards have helped the company to substantially reduce the risk related to a customer. Combined with the superior underwriting principles, the use of technology and innovation in collections has led to lower delinquencies which are below the industry average, the statement said.

The holding entity has previously raised over $43 million cumulatively in equity from marquee investors including ICICI Bank and Arkam Ventures.