Alteria invests $11.5m in India's Lendingkart

Founded in 2014, Lendingkart seeks to make it easier for Indian micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to access financing, offering collateral-free working capital and other loans to small businesses. The fintech arm operates with the company’s non-banking finance company (NBFC), Lendingkart Finance, to create loans and handle credit checks. The company claims to have disbursed more than 50,000 loans to 40,000 small businesses across India.

The loan represents Alteria’s single biggest investment to date, according the firm’s Twitter feed. Lendingkart will use the capital to expand its loan book through nationwide outreach to its target clients of MSMEs.

Lendingkart has raised several rounds of capital from VC backers such as Fullerton Financial Holdings, a subsidiary of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings that led the company’s $87 million Series C round last year. Additional investors include Saama Capital, Mayfield India, and Bertelsmann India Investment.

Alteria was launched in 2017 by Ajay Hattangdi and Vinod Murali, co-founders of venture debt provider InnoVen Capital. While InnoVen was growing its exposure to Southeast Asia and China, Hattangdi and Murali believed appetite for venture debt in India was set to grow, and decided to launch a new firm that would focus exclusively on the country. Alteria is currently raising its debut fund, which is targeting INR10 billion and announced a second close of INR6.3 billion last year.

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• Topics
• South Asia
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• India
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• TMT
• NBFCs