Fintech startup Creditas Solutions Pvt. Ltd has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A funding round led by 1Crowd, an equity crowdfunding platform, a company statement said. This is the second round of equity financing that 1Crowd has led for Creditas.
The current round also saw participation from marquee investors that include Infina Finance, an investment company jointly owned by Kotak Mahindra Bank and Uday Kotak's family; Aniruddha Malpani, a leading IVF specialist; Daud Ali, entrepreneur and business leader; and S Sriniwasan, managing director, Kotak Investment Advisors.
The Gurgaon-based startup will use the money to expand its team, enhance it data science capabilities and to make investments in technology, particularly focusing on providing banks a single platform to manage the entire delinquency cycle, the statement added.
Founded in 2015 by Anshuman Panwar and Madan Srinivasan, Creditas helps banks and non-banking finance companies in customer acquisition, cross-selling, delinquency detection, financial literacy and debt recovery. The company recently roped in Neeraj Dhawan, group president at Yes Bank, as an advisor to its team.
“This new round of funding not only gives us the capital to scale exponentially but also validates the faith the banking sector is reposing in our solutions,†said Panwar, co-founder of Creditas.
Creditas said that the investment in technology will help it to enhance the quality of the services it provides by deploying a data and communication engine that structures, validates and enhances creditor data to create accurate customer profiles. It also uses machine learning to engage those customers through digital media.
"We believe that with increased focus and activity in the retail lending space, there is a massive opportunity for building and providing proven SaaS-based digital technology solutions for banks and NBFCs,†said Venkat Subramanian, CEO, Infina Finance.
According to the company, its platform helps banks solve a pressing need - how to control and cure delinquencies as they scale up their retail lending operations. Their technology is solving problems that were so far mostly done by call centres and field agents.
1Crowd has helped several companies in the past year to raise early-stage funding. Earlier this month, it marked the first close its debut angel fund at Rs 23 crore ($3.5 million).
Its investments include health-tech firm Karma healthcare, realty tech startup Zipgrid, community building platform Fourth Ambit, and advertising-technology startup Proximit Media India.