CDC leads $21m round for Indian fintech player

CDC contributed $15 million citing the company’s “advanced data-driven approach” to connecting with hard-to-reach customers. Omidyar Network and Flourish Ventures also participated. Value-add measures are expected to include improvements to risk systems and customer protection protocols.

“Our investment will support Indifi to increase its SME lending multifold over the next five years, including customers that are harder to reach and otherwise wouldn’t have access to growth finance,” Srini Nagarajan, a managing director and head of Asia at CDC, said in a statement.

Indifi’s technology gathers and analyzes data about SMEs from various sources and draws insights that inform creditworthiness judgments. The digital approach is said to reduce risk, costs and paperwork, while streamlining the customer experience. The company claims to have disbursed some 15,000 loans across more than 200 cities since inception in 2015.

CDC is an active investor in India, where its strategy includes both fund commitments and direct investments. Recent activity in the local financial space includes a contribution to an approximately $27 million round for SME loan services provider Veritas Finance and a full exit from Ujjivan Small Finance Bank that realized a return in excess of $63 million.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Early-stage
• Financials
• Technology
• India
• Financial Services
• SME
• CDC Group