Rubique, an online marketplace for financial products, has appointed Suresh Sethi, former chief executive and managing director of Vodafone M-Pesa, and Alexia Yannopoulos, director at Apis Partners LLP, as independent directors on its board, a person aware of the development told VCCircle.
Sethi, who recently quit M-Pesa, is a financial services industry veteran. He has worked with Citigroup and YES Bank earlier.
Yannopoulos is a director at London-based private equity asset manager Apis Partners LLP, which is focused on financial services investments in Africa and South Asia. Prior to Apis, she served as vice president at investment and advisory firm Anthemis and has also worked at Deutsche Bank.
"Suresh’s expertise across global banking, fin-tech and digital payments and Alexia’s experience in the banking and financial services domain will prove valuable to Rubique,†Manav Jeet, managing director and chief executive of Rubique, said.
Run by Bestdealfinance.com Pvt. Ltd, Rubique is a credit facilitator for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individuals. In the SME segment, it focuses on loans for commercial vehicles and construction equipment. The retail segment includes home loans, personal loans and two-wheeler loans, among others. The company recently ventured into general insurance by partnering Bajaj Allianz GIC.
“My immediate goal at Rubique would be to help them with international insights on similar models and help strengthen the company proposition,†Yannopoulos said.
Formerly known as Bestdealfinance.com, the startup was founded by Manav Jeet and Sandeep Nambiar in February 2015. Prior to this, Manav Jeet was senior president and head of retail banking at YES Bank. Before that, he worked with Reliance Consumer Finance, HDFC Bank, and SBI Mutual Fund, among other names. Nambiar held different technical positions at Nomura Securities and Wipro before beginning his entrepreneurial career.
In June this year, the fin-tech startup had raised $3 million in a bridge round from existing investor Kalaari Capital and Udayan Goyal, managing partner at Apis Partners.
Prior to this round, Rubique had raised $6.16 million, as per VCCEdge, the data research arm of VCCircle.
In April 2016, it had secured $3 million in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital with participation from YourNest Angel Fund, Globevestor and Dexter Angel Circle.
The company claims to have facilitated disbursement of loans worth over Rs 1,740 crore and enabled more than 43,000 credit card setups. It aims to disburse loans worth over Rs 2,000 crore by 2018.
Rubique’s lending network includes names like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank, as well as non-banking financial companies such as Aditya Birla Housing Finance, PNB Housing Finance and Indiabulls Financial Services. It claims to have on-boarded 51 financial institutions as partners.
Rubique is currently operational in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Jaipur.