Delhi-based online lending platform ZipLoan has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by GrowX Ventures and other angel investors, co-founder Kshitij Puri told Techcircle.
Angel investor Sunil Kalra, Murugappa Group scion Arun Venkatachalam, and Badal Malick, ex-Snapdeal executive and one of the investors in Pi Ventures participated in the round.
The startup said it will use the money to fund its technology product, app, and data science capabilities. “We will also utilise the fresh funding to build our small business loan portfolio,†ZipLoan co-founder Shalabh Singhal added.
ZiplLoan is a trade name of Blue Jay Finlease Ltd, a non-banking finance company (NBFC) registered with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Launched in September 2015 by Puri and Singhal, ZipLoan is a technology-enabled lending platform that provides loans to small businesses. The startup offers loans of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh over a period of 6-24 months. The startup has developed a proprietary automated credit engine that has reduced credit assessment period at ZipLoan to few minutes compared with up to a week’s time in a traditional financial institution.
The company said it targets a segment, which hitherto has found difficult to get credit from other financial institutions, given the granular peculiarities of several small business verticals and poor cost benefit trade-off with respect to sourcing and underwriting small loans. ZipLoan has also partnered with other NBFCs for co-lending using its tech platform.
Prior to founding ZipLoan, Puri was heading the investments team at an SME focused private equity fund Pragati Fund. He previously worked with ICICI Bank, Bank of America, and CarVal Investors. Singhal, an IIT graduate who earlier worked with Goldman Sachs, had also co-founded a CRM (customer relationship management) product and digital marketing startup Credence.
Earlier this year, ZipLoan raised its first investment round from ex-Capital18 MD Sarbvir Singh. Singh is also on the board of Bookmyshow and Yatra.
The online lending segment has seen a lot of activity in recent months with startups targeting different segments such as small businesses, students and salaried professionals. Last month, LoanTap Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an online platform that offers EMI-free loans and overdraft products to salaried professionals, secured $3 million (Rs 20 crore) from Mumbai-based affluent individuals Abhishek Pandey and Jaysukh Sapra.
Lending marketplace Deal4Loans, in July raised $15 million from Franklin Templeton International Services (India) Pvt. Ltd. In June, SME lending firm Lendingkart raised $32 million in a Series B round led by Bertelsmann India Investments and others, and Bengaluru-based KrazyBee.com, which offers loans to students with no credit history or credit cards, raised $2 million in seed funding from two Chinese firms.
Former Housing CFO Ritesh Jain teamed up with Manish Lunia and Deepak Jain in July to start an online lending platform ‘FlexiLoans’ for SMEs.
Also, Delhi-based Zouk Loans pivoted its online lending business that catered to small and medium-sized businesses to become an enterprise software provider for financial institutions.
New Delhi-based boutique advisory firm Burgeon Bizsupport represented GrowX Ventures in this deal.
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