Aye Finance Pvt. Ltd, a non-banking financial technology company focussed on micro, small and medium enterprises, has raised Rs 210 crore (approximately $27.74 million at current exchange rates) in its Series E funding round.
The round has been led by CapitalG, the Google-operated investment firm formerly known as Google Capital. Other participants in the round include LGT Lightstone, Falcon Edge, A91 Partners and MAJ Invest.
The Gurugram-based company will use the funds to add to its liquidity base and strengthen operations to offset any impact from the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, Aye Finance said in a statement.
“Our loans are underwritten with cluster insights and this continues to assure good repayment behavior in our portfolio,” Sanjay Sharma, MD at Aye Finance, said.
This latest capital infusion takes the total equity funding raised by Aye Finance to over Rs 690 crore, the statement added.
Aye Finance, set up in 2014, provides working capital and business development loans to companies in the MSME space. It uses statistical models and predictive analytics to determine risk profiles, even in the absence of formal credit histories or documentation.
Separately, CapitalG partner and board member Sumiran Das said the firm was confident in its investment in Aye Finance because of its underwriting methodology and on-ground presence.
“The relevance of Aye in the post-covid economy in serving the financing needs of micro-businesses is significant,” LGT Lightstone Aspada managing director Kartik Srivastava added.
According to VCCEdge, the data research arm of Mosaic Digital, Aye Finance reported net sales of Rs 209.61 crore for the 2019 financial year, with profit-after-tax figures of Rs 25.08 crore for the same period. The fintech-focussed NBFC also counts among its investors institutions such as responsAbility, BlueOrchard and a leading Indian bank.
In January, the United States-based non-profit organisation Accion International sold its stake in Aye Finance to A91 Partners, the venture capital firm founded by former Sequoia Capital India executives Abhay Pandey, VT Bharadwaj, Gautam Mago and Kaushik Anand.
In December, the financier raised Rs 107 crore ($15 million) in debt funding from Swiss impact investor BlueOrchard. The impact group has been investing in the company since May 2017 and has taken a total exposure to Rs 290 crore in the lender to small and medium-sized businesses.
