India's KreditBee secures $75m Series C

The round comprised primary and secondary capital, the company said in a statement, without disclosing which investors had exited. Finnov – KreditBee’s parent – had previously raised more than $43 million equity funding from investors such as ICICI Bank and Arkam, it added.

According to The Economic Times, Finnov cut back its Chinese investors from 40% to 10%, with Xiaomi making a full exit and Shunwei Capital and Kunlun Capital reducing their holdings. Xiaomi and Shunwei led an $8 million Series A in 2017. Relations between New Delhi and Beijing soured in 2020, with India introducing a mandatory approval requirement for Chinese investments. More recently, Indian regulators have taken a tougher line on money lending apps specifically.

Launched in 2018, KreditBee describes itself as an instant personal loan platform for young professionals who can borrow sums of up INR200,000 ($2,750) with tenures of 2-15 months. Cash is deposited into bank accounts within 15 minutes of an application being made, leveraging a 100% technology-enabled credit-checking and underwriting process. Algorithms and five different scorecards are used to vet first-time borrowers.

KreditBee claims to have crossed the 30 million installs threshold less than two years after inception. Its user base now numbers 20 million with more than four million credit customers. There are plans to enter areas like digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans, and credit lines.

Finnov also owns Krazybee Services Private, a non-deposit taking non-banking financial company (NBFC) that has been registered with the Reserve Bank of India since 2017. Through this channel, it raises debt from the likes of ICICI Bank, Au Small Finance Bank, Bank of Baroda, and HSBC that is packaged into loan products. In addition, the KreditBee app allows banks and NBFCs to provide credit to customers as direct lending partners.

“We started with a dream to help the unserved and underserved segment who have 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,” said Madhusudan Ekambaram, co-founder and CEO of KreditBee.

Ashish Dave, India CEO at Mirae Asset Venture Investments, noted that the large scale at which the platform is able to disburse loans to customers showcases not only the stability and strength of its tech stack but also the robustness of its approach to credit scoring using alternative data points.

Mirae Asset is participating alongside internet services provider Naver via the Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, which was set up in 2019 with KRW1 trillion ($861.4 million).

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• South Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Expansion
• India
• Growth capital
• Fintech
• Financial Services
• NBFCs
• Mirae Asset Venture Investment
• Alpine Capital
• Arkam Ventures