Indian FinTech CredAvenue Reaches Unicorn Status With $1.3B Valuation

CredAvenue, the debt marketplace, is the newest Indian unicorn, having raised $137 million in a funding round, Bloomberg reported Sunday (March 6).

The FinTech is headquartered in Chennai and it connects enterprises with lenders and investors. Its value rose to $1.3 billion from $410 million last September.

This means it is India’s fastest FinTech unicorn, with 18 months between its establishment and this new valuation.

The company provides digital tech solutions for the debt cycle, everything from disbursal to collections.

The newest round was led by Insight Partners, B Capital Group and Dragoneer.

CredAvenue has said it plans to use the new funding to expand in India as well as other key global markets – it recently bought Spocto, which specializes in technology to support collections.

“India’s debt market will go into hyper-growth mode … provided digital debt infrastructure supports the growth,” founder and Chief Executive Officer Gaurav Kumar said in an online interview from Chennai. “It’s the equivalent of the boom in India’s equity markets in the 1990s.”

The Bloomberg report noted the surge in financing for Indian eCommerce and technology companies, which has led to a unicorn-making spree in 2021. With more investments from venture capital firms, Bloomberg reported that this might continue this year.

Read more: India’s Social Commerce Platform DealShare Hit Unicorn Status; Valued at $1.6B

PYMNTS noted that DealShare, the social commerce grocery startup, was another recent Indian unicorn, with Dragoneer also investing in that.

DealShare was the fifth unicorn from India in January.

DealShare planned to use the money for tech and data science spending, and an expansion of its logistics infrastructure and making an offline store franchise network.

The company was founded in 2018 and sells daily essentials to middle-income people with a community-buying model.