MSME fintech lender FlexiLoans Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised $90 million (around Rs 693 crore) in a Series B funding round in a mix of equity and debt from Fasanara Capital, MAJ Invest and Caravel Group chairman Harry Banga’s family office.
The fresh capital will be used to strengthen and broaden its lending base and reach out to a large number of small and underserved small enterprises. It will also use the capital to further scale its BNPL (Merchants Buy-Now-Pay-Later) platform, and analytics capabilities, expand its partner ecosystem, and create new product category offerings, the company said in a statement.
Existing shareholders including KKR’s Sanjay Nayar also participated in the round.
The investment marks UK-based venture capitalist Fasanara Capital’s debut investment in India. The company’s capital founder Francesco Filia and MAJ Invest’s managing director David Paradiso will be joining the FlexiLoans’ board.
FlexiLoans did not disclose the valuation at which the funds were raised. Although, according to people aware of the development, the company’s valuation after this round was around $100-110 million.
The company has managed to keep its non-performing assets (NPAs) below 4% which is due to its approach towards risk assessments, co-founder, Deepak Jain told VCCircle.
He added that 53% of loans are to SMEs borrowing for the first time ever, 25% is to women entrepreneurs and 47% of loans are in tier II and III towns. The company has also touched Rs 100 crore in annual revenue run rate (ARR).
FlexiLoans was founded by four Indian School of Business alumni—Deepak Jain, who was an investment banker at Axis Capital; Manish Lunia, a former executive at Aditya Birla Group's M&A unit; Ritesh Jain, former finance chief of Housing.com; and Abhishek Kothari, data science and analytics professional.
The company said it has disbursed over Rs 1,700 crore across 1,600 cities with 100% digital sourcing and has zero branches. It also has partnerships with e-commerce and other fintech players including Flipkart, Amazon, Pine Labs, and Mswipe.
In October, FlexiLoans raised $20.2 million in funding through a mix of equity and debt from investors including the family office of Falguni Nayar and husband Sanjay Nayar.
Axis Capital Limited and Asia Link Advisors were FlexiLoans’ advisers to this round.
UK-based Fasanara Capital is a hedge fund founded in 2011 with more than $3.5 billion in assets under management. It provides financing to firms including cryptocurrency exchanges and digital lending businesses. The hedge fund has previously raised about $550 million across two venture funds to back tech companies. It is currently raising its third fund to back early-stage technology startups and has already held the first close of $100 million.
