Indian Digital Lending Startup KreditBee Raises $75 Million

Indian lending startup KreditBee, based in Bengaluru, is coming off a Series C round with $75 million, Mint reported.

The round featured participation from Premji Invest, Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund, Alpine Capital and Arkam Ventures, the report stated.

KreditBee Co-Founder and CEO Madhusudan E said the objective of the company is to help underserved populations that often do not have access to lending services, according to the report.

“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,” he said in the report. “This investment would help us take more positive steps towards achieving that.”

Previously, the holding entity raised over $43 million from numerous investors, the report stated.

KreditBee was launched in 2018 to focus on full-stack digital lending for young professionals. On the platform, both salaried and self-employed people can access digital personal loans and consumer durable loans, according to the report.

Soon, the report stated, KreditBee wants to expand its line into offering digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans and credit lines.

India’s unbanked population is around one-eighth by the estimate of the World Bank, but in a PYMNTS interview, Mandar Agashe, founder, managing director and vice chairman of Sarvatra Technologies, who said the more important distinction is the underbanked population. He said that comes down to the difference between how banks are classified there versus somewhere like the U.S.

Agashe said in India, there are around 50,000 micro-sized community banks and credit unions in the country that don’t officially count as banks. They don’t issue credit cards or have ATMs and usually offer extremely limited services, only serving as places for people to interact with cashiers for withdrawals or deposits at the counter.

Agashe said the future in India will likely always involve cash, as it’s a deeply ingrained payment model. He said it is likely that checks will be replaced by digital payments, however.