Rural lender Sarvagram raises USD 10.5 mn from Elevation, Elevar Equity

Rural-focused financial services player Sarvagram secured USD 10.5 million around Rs 76 crore in an equity investment round led by Elevation Capital formerly Saif Partners along with existing investor Elevar Equity.

Rural-focused financial services player Sarvagram secured USD 10.5 million (around Rs 76 crore) in an equity investment round led by Elevation Capital (formerly Saif Partners) along with existing investor Elevar Equity. This marks the second high-profile private equity investment into the city-based startup set up just about two years ago. Sarvagram is building a rural household-centric, data-science-led digital financial distribution platform.

This funding will be utilised to further strengthen its technology platform, enter new geographies and launch new offerings, Sarvagram said in a statement. This was a Series B equity investment round.

Co-founded by Utpal Isser and Sameer Mishra, Sarvagram has developed and deployed proprietary tools, including scorecards for various customer segments to automate its lending decision.

Elevar has been at the forefront of impact investing since 2006, impacting over 30 million low-income households in India and Latin America.

Elevation Capital is an early-stage investor, with USD 2 billion under management across consumer internet, financial services, logistics, enterprise SaaS (software as a service), consumer brands and B2B services. Since 2001, the Elevation team has been an early partner to over 100 companies to date, including several category-defining players like Paytm, Swiggy, Urban Company, ShareChat, Meesho, NoBroker, Spinny, Acko, NSE and Aye Finance.