India’s Capital Float secures $15m funding round

Ribbit Capital, which previously led a $45 million Series C round, Amazon, SAIF Partners, and Sequoia Capital India contributed capital to the seven-year-old start-up in the latest round. According to the company, it has raised more than $125 million in private equity and issued $300 million in debt to finance its products. 

Capital Float, founded in 2013, offers short-term loans to consumers and small businesses through a technology-enabled loan origination and credit underwriting platform. Partnering with Amazon, it provides consumer loans to facilitate online purchases. It also offers working capital loans to schools, retailers and other types of SMEs. In addition, the start-up operates Walnut, an app that helps users track personal expenses and visualize monthly budgets. Personal credit lines are available through the app.

Capital Float says it has worked with more than 500,000 customers and helped disburse $1.2 billion (INR88 billion) in loans. It is seeking to offer digital finance solutions to SMEs in smaller cities and further scale its efforts in e-commerce-related finance.

“At a time when the industry is faced with multiple challenges, we are grateful for this reinforcement and want to continue making lending effortless for SMEs and consumers across the nation. We’re eager to significantly increase our lending capacity once the lockdown [a 21-day stay-at-home advisory imposed by the government] is lifted to enable SME growth and consumer spending at scale,” said Sashank Rishyasringa and Gaurav Hinduja, co-founders of Capital Float, in a joint statement.

Last year, Capital Float downsized and reduced its cost base by 30% due to liquidity-related challenges caused by the collapse of several non-banking financial companies, according to the co-founders. They claim gross non-performing assets currently stand at 5.9% of total assets and the start-up is on track to achieve profitability. Most of the revenue currently comes from consumer-focused lending solutions. 

Other VC-backed Indian financial technology start-ups offering internet-enabled lending solutions include MoneyTap, Kissht, InCred, EarlySalary and Paysense. Another group provides digital finance solutions to SMEs, among them SMEcorner, NeoGrowth and IndiaLends.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Expansion
• Financials
• India
• Fintech
• TMT
• Ribbit Capital
• Sequoia Capital
• SAIF Partners