Rubique, an online marketplace for financial products, has raised $3 million (Rs 19.4 crore) in a bridge round from existing investor Kalaari Capital and Udayan Goyal, managing partner at Apis Partners, a company spokesperson confirmed to VCCircle.
Apis Partners is a private equity firm focused on financial services in the growth markets of Africa and Asia.
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.
Prior to this round, the fin-tech startup had raised $6.16 million, as per VCCEdge, the data research arm of VCCircle.
In April 2016, Rubique had secured $3 million in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital. YourNest Angel Fund, Globevestor and Dexter Angel Circle had also put in money.
The latest bridge round was first reported by The Economic Times.
Formerly known as Bestdealfinance.com, the startup was founded by Manavjeet Singh and Sandeep Nambiar in February 2015. Prior to this, Singh 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.
The company claims to have facilitated disbursement of loans worth over Rs 1,250 crore and enabled more than 31,000 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.
The fin-tech space has seen a lot of investment activity this year. A recent VCCircle analysis showed that at least 25 fin-tech startups had raised funding in the first five months of 2017.