Lightrock leads round for India BNPL player Capital Float
Capital Float, an Indian lending platform now positioning itself as a buy now, pay later (BNPL) specialist, has raised $50 million led by the local unit of UK-based private equity investor Lightrock.
Existing backers Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, and Creation Investments reupped with support from individual investors such as David Velez (founder of Nubank), Kunal Shah (founder of Cred), and Amrish Rau (CEO of Pine Labs).
It brings Capital Float’s equity funding to more than $175 million. The company has also raised about $300 million in debt. The fresh capital will be used to scale the BNPL offerings and expand the currently 100,000-strong merchant ecosystem.
Capital Float was launched in 2013 to offer short-term loans to consumers and small businesses through a technology-enabled loan origination and credit underwriting platform. It provides consumer loans to facilitate online purchases, as well as working capital loans to schools, retailers, and other types of small to medium-sized enterprises.
The company claims to be India’s BNPL market leader, with some two million purchases processed every month. Through a recent partnership with Razorpay, the service is said to facilitate installment payments for more than INR20 billion ($269 million) of online purchases a year via sites such as Amazon and MakeMyTrip.
Additional products include Walnut, an app that helps users track personal expenses and visualize monthly budgets and manage personal credit lines. Walnut has been downloaded 12 million times.
“Capital Float has solved the unique triumvirate of customer experience, risk management, and merchant partnerships that lies at the heart of unlocking the BNPL opportunity in India,” Saleem Asaria, a partner at Lightrock India, said in a statement.
“In addition to its strong technology platform, it has built a sophisticated underwriting and collections capability, along with an ethical lending playbook, that makes the model very compelling.”
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