Quona leads $12.8m round for India's SMEcorner

Accion Venture Lab contributed INR100 million to the equity portion of the round, which amounts to INR350 million. The balance consisted of debt funding provided by Northern Arc Capital and Vivriti Capital. Quona invested via its Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund (AFIF), a partnership with Accion International that raised $141 million in 2017.

Founded in 2014, SMEcorner provides business loans to small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) via an online application process that emphasizes speed and affordable interest rates. The company uses artificial intelligence to make disbursements within three days. It is said to have about 3,000 users on the platform and targeting 12,000 by 2020.

Investor interest is based on demand for speeding up the traditional credit assessment process in India, which can take four weeks even in expediated circumstances and limits SMEs’ scope for growth. Total debt and equity funding for SMEcormer comes to INR2 billion, including a INR475 round last year from Accion Venture Lab, the Dutch Good Growth Fund, and Capital First.

AFIF invests across India and Southeast Asia and is considered the first dedicated financial technology fund targeting unbanked and underserved markets. Other Indian investments include flexible business loans provider NeoGrowth and business-to-business classified listing marketplace IndiaMart. Accion, which incubated Quona in 2014, is the fund’s anchor investor.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Early-stage
• India
• Financial Services
• artificial intelligence
• SME