SuperMoney, a platform that facilitates loans to blue-collar and gig-economy workers, said it has raised $1 million (around Rs 7 crore) from early-stage social impact investor Unitus Ventures.
The startup, which is owned by Getclarity Fintech Services Pvt. Ltd, will use the capital to strengthen its team and expand operations beyond the 12 cities it currently operates in, SuperMoney said in a statement.
The Mumbai-based startup, founded by Shiv Nandan Negi and Nikhil Banerjee, began operations in 2018. SuperMoney accesses customers by partnering enterprises such as Uber, Swiggy, Shuttl, Udaan and MedPlus that have large pools of blue-collar workers, contract employees and service providers.
The startup with 300,000 customers has helped disburse more than 55,000 loans so far. It has a presence in regions such as Mumbai, Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region), Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata.
“The blue-collar consumer and the emerging gig-economy segments are today not serviced by traditional banks and NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) and this is the $100 billion market opportunity that we are tapping into,” said SuperMoney co-founder Banerjee.
He added that the company aims to service one million customers in the next 24 months.
SuperMoney had raised an angel round of funding from Shachindra Nath, chairman of Ugro Capital and former CEO of Religare; and Madhukar Gangadi, MedPlus founder, in October 2017.
Unitus Ventures, formerly known as Unitus Seed Fund, marked the first close of its second fund at Rs 100 crore ($15 million) in April 2018. The fund has a corpus target of Rs 300 crore ($46 million).
Last year, Unitus Ventures led an investment in New Street Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which builds and operates blockchain-enabled platforms for institutional clients in the financial services segment.
The second fund’s other investments include Predible, a cloud-based solution for radiology driven by artificial intelligence (AI), and Cyclops Medtech, a medical technology company.
Unitus Ventures' first fund, which had mobilised $23 million, made 23 investments including those in health technology developer UE LifeSciences, microlending platform Milaap, ed-tech startup Curiositi, and online marketplace for handlooms and handicraft GoCoop.
