Kavach Financial Services Pvt Ltd, which runs consumer debt relief platform FREED, on Thursday said it has raised pre-Series A funding of $2.8 million (around Rs 21 crore) led by Inflection Point Ventures.
The round also participation from Multiply Ventures, Chandigarh Angels Network, Lead Angels, Hyderabad Angels, The Chennai Angels, among other high-net-worth individuals.
The startup plans to deploy the fresh capital to bolster its team across verticals, and build the tech stack to roll out new and differentiated debt relief products to scale up customer acquisition and brand promotion initiatives.
"FREED is the only consumer-facing platform that is aiming to bring borrowers seeking debt resolution and lenders on a neutral platform to amicably resolve the debt given the financial hardship of such borrowers. With the growth in retail credit, mounting NPAs and low recovery rates on late-stage delinquencies, FREED is attempting to solve a $15 billion NPA problem.
The current retail unsecured loan book has surpassed $160 billion and is growing at 12% + CAGR. There is a huge opportunity for debt relief in this segment starting from prevention to cure for debt-burdened consumers," said Ritesh Srivastava, Founder and CEO, FREED.
FREED was launched in 2020 by Srivastava with a vision to help consumers achieve their financial freedom by helping them eliminate their debt. It also offers personalized budgeting, spend analytics, repayment simulations using AI/ML, debt pay-off strategies and credit education to help people avoid the debt trap.
FREED claims to have enrolled over 6,500 consumers with over Rs 350 crore in retail debt and settled over a thousand accounts with creditors, offering debt reduction to consumers and resolution of bad debt for creditors.
"FREED is the only debt relief platform in India that enables a person to clear their debt smoothly and even reduces the payment amount with their domain expertise, thus giving the customer a chance to improve their credit rating and ultimately be debt-free. IPV aims to extend their support in helping FREED strengthen their services and marketing plan," said Vinay Bansal, Founder and CEO, Inflection Point Ventures.