Digital lending platform Lentra AI, on Tuesday announced it has acquired artificial intelligence solutions company, TheDataTeam for an undisclosed amount.
Post-acquisition Rangarajan Vasudevan, founder and chief executive officer of TheDataTeam will join HDFC Bank and Bessemer Venture Partners-funded Lentra as the co-founder and chief data officer, as per terms of the deal.
The deal will help banks and financial institutions make better data-driven decisions on customers' loan repayment history. Lentra will use TheDataTeam's Cadenz, a behaviour intelligence platform to help financial institutions make data-driven decisions.
“We are seeing explosive growth in the credit market. Some of our clients have grown their loan book by 10 times after coming on board the Lentra lending cloud. By integrating the Cadenz platform into the Lentra lending cloud, we will be able to provide an even bigger competitive edge to our clients in the entire credit lifecycle,” said Sandeep Mathur, chief revenue officer, Lentra.
Lentra will integrate its SaaS (Software as a Service) and API (Application Programming Interface), with Cadenz’s stack. Lentra’s open API-driven modular architecture helps banks create tailored lending and customer experiences with a 95% straight-through processing (STP) rate. This gives banks and financial institutions access to a new customer base, reduces non-performing assets (NPAs) and improves operational efficiencies, Lentra said in a press statement.
"Lentra has already established itself as the fastest-growing lending cloud. Given both companies had ambitions to scale fast in adjacent spaces and in the same geographies, it made perfect sense to merge our strengths in product and business-building," said Vasudevan.
Lentra was founded in 2019 by D Venkatesh and Ankur Handa. Lentra is a cloud-native platform designed and developed to help financial institutions with the lending ecosystem. It offers full-stack, digital, secured products and solutions. The lending cloud platform services more than 50 financial institutions and has processed more than 13 billion transactions on its platform, the company said.
Lentra is backed by HDFC Bank who invested Rs 7 crore in the AI solutions company in 2019. Lentra also counts Bessemer Venture Partners, and SIG as its backers.