India's CredAvenue sees 3x valuation jump in six months
Indian small business credit platform CredAvenue has raised a USD 137m round featuring B Capital Group at a valuation of USD 1.3b, up 3x in the past six months.
B Capital, a US and Singapore-headquartered VC firm set up by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and former Bain Capital investor Raj Ganguly, is expanding aggressively in the region, with India one of the key markets. Recent fintech deals include backing digital banking services provider Fi last November.
“In addition to the India cross-border enterprise investments, we do a fair amount of B2B investing. In India and Southeast Asia, there is a lot more SMB [small and medium-sized business] flavour because you don’t have large enterprises,” Ganguly told AVCJ last year. “The future enterprise leaders in India are today serving SMBs.”
B Capital is leading the latest investment alongside Insight Partners and Dragoneer Investment Group. It follows an approximately USD 90m Series A round in September that valued CredAvenue at USD 410m. That round was led by Sequoia Capital India, with support from Lightspeed India Partners, Lightrock India, Stride Ventures, and TVS Capital Funds.
CredAvenue connects 2,750 enterprises with 750 lenders. By digitising the debt raising process, the platform seeks to increase access to debt for smaller organisations while reducing inefficiencies. It claims to have facilitated INR 850bn (USD 11bn) in loans since its inception in 2018. There are also services around co-lending, supply chain finance, and bond investment.
“Once a partner — whether it’s a bank on the lender side or a borrower — integrates with us on our operating system, you get access to everyone sitting on our network,” Gaurav Kumar, the company’s founder, told TechCrunch.
“At the core, our offering is about interoperability. We are paving the way for India’s debt market to realise its full potential, and we plan to soon [be] a leading player in the global debt markets with our unique and diversified product suites.”
CredAvenue’s parent company, a non-banking financial company called Vivriti Capital, received a USD 50m round in 2020 led by Lightrock, then investing as LGT Lightstone Aspada. Creation Investments, a US-based GP focused on microfinance institutions and small business lending, provided USD 44m across two rounds the prior year.
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