Aeries Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates personal loan app CASHe, has raised Rs 25 crore ($3.8 million) in Series A funding led by Mathew Cyriac, former India co-head of private equity at Blackstone Group LP, media reports said on Saturday.
Cyriac invested both in his personal capacity as well as through Florintree Advisors, the alternative asset management firm he took over in February this year, The Economic Times reported.
The one-year-old fin-tech startup has also secured a credit line from Kotak Mahindra Bank.
This is the first round of external funding for CASHe, with Kumar himself having invested Rs 42 crore while setting it up through other group companies, the report added. CASHe will use the funds to scale up operations.
As part of the transaction, Cyriac and Pulak Ghosh, a professor at IIM-Bangalore, have joined the CASHe board.
Queries sent to CASHe did not elicit a response till the time of filing this report.
Last month, Cyriac participated in a Rs 22-crore ($3.34 million then) round in Hyderabad-based tech accessories e-tailer Palred Technologies Ltd.
Founded by V Raman Kumar, CASHe disburses short-term personal loans of Rs 5,000-1 lakh to young professionals based on their earning potential and social quotient. The startup uses an algorithm that determines a user's credit-worthiness by tracking his or her mobile data usage, social media profiles and identity details.
CASHe disburses loans for tenures of 15/30/90 days, and borrowers can repay their loans via bank transfer or cheque. The company claims it takes merely 8 minutes to sanction a loan after the submission of application.
The app, present on both Android and iOS platforms, has over 1 lakh downloads and 20,000 registered users. CASHe claims to have disbursed loans worth Rs 50 crore since inception, and is targeting a Rs 1,000-crore loan book by next year, a report in The Times of India said.
Kumar told The Economic Times that the company will be profitable around July.
Like this report? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get our top reports.
