Fintech startup, Avail Finance, has raised 17.2 million in an investment round led by Matrix Partners India, as reported by Financial Express.
The Fintech startup also saw participation from Ola’s co-founders – Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of Flipkart – Binny Bansal, Freecharge founder – Kunal Shah and founder of Mswipe – Manish Patel.
The funds raised include debt and credit lines from multiple Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC)s.
About the startup
Avail Finance was founded in 2017 by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta. It serves as an NBFC backed lending platform for blue-collared workers.
Using basic KYC process, the company uses technologies like Artificial Intelligence to automate the verification process.
Both the founders come from a computer science engineering background. Ankush, an alumnus of the University of Illinois has worked in Ola. Tushar has completed his graduation from IIT Roorkee and has experience working with Adobe.
Speaking about the investment raised, Ankush Aggarwal, Founder of Avail Finance said,
“With our mission of making credit available to anyone worthy of it, we at Avail, are looking to create an accessible financing and lending ecosystem in the country.”
Aggarwal feels that technology has brought about a revolution in the lending industry. He added,
“By solving for the core of the problem in not having a credit history, using advanced technology, data sciences and artificial intelligence, we are bringing a new approach to an age-old problem. The huge chunk of people in the urban mass who are currently being ignored by the formal lending sector will stand to benefit from Avail’s solutions.”
About Matrix India
Talking on the untapped lending segment for blue-collared workers, Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director of Matrix India said, “Consumer lending to the blue-collared workforce is a large, untapped and hard to solve opportunity. We are impressed by Avail’s differentiated sourcing and underwriting strategy, and are privileged to partner with Ankush and Tushar on their journey. We believe it’s still early days of the India Fintech story and will continue to invest in the space.”
The investment firm, Matrix Partners India, holds over 4500 crores under management and focuses on seed, early stage and early growth companies.
They have invested in Ola, Quickr, Practo, Dailyhunt, Mswipe, Credit Vidya, among others. The firm has its headquarters in the US, China and India, claiming to own over $4 billion under management.
There are around 30 online lending platforms with a loan book pegged at $25 million. India is expected to grow by 160 times in coming 5 years to reach the $4 billion mark. This would bring India next to China which currently stands at a $100 billion lending market.
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