KreditBee raises USD 75 mn in funding from Premji Invest, Mirae Asset, others

Fintech start-up KreditBee on Monday said it has raised USD 75 million (Rs 544.6 crore) in funding from Premji Invest, Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund, Alpine Capital and Arkam Ventures.

The funds raised in Series C funding round consist of both primary and secondary investment, a statement said.

The Bengaluru-based lending company will use the funds to support its effort to fuel financial inclusion and drive credit uptake in the economy, especially for the unserved and underserved segment of the population, it added.

''We started with a dream to help the unserved and underserved segment who have always found it difficult to enter the formal lending sector, either due to lengthy offline processes or traditional underwriting methods,'' KreditBee co-founder and CEO Madhusudan E said.

With a larger portfolio of loan products, KreditBee's objective is to provide credit to over 180 million new-to-credit customers who were not provided formal credit earlier, and this investment would help the company take more positive steps towards achieving that goal, he added.

The holding entity has previously raised over USD 43 million cumulatively in equity from marquee investors, including ICICI Bank and Arkam Ventures.

Registered in March 2016, the group entity also holds Krazybee Services Pvt Ltd - a Systemically important non-deposit taking non-banking financial company (NBFC-ND-SI) registered with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) since May 2017.

The group launched its flagship brand KreditBee in May 2018, focused on full-stack digital lending for young professionals. The platform specialises in providing digital personal loans and consumer durable loans to both salaried and self-employed. The loan amount disbursed can be up to Rs 2 lakhs while the tenures range from 2 months to 15 months.

The company currently has over 1,200 employees and a user base of over 20 million with over 4 million credit customers.

The platform plans to diversify its product offering by venturing into digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans and credit line, the statement said.

''We are impressed by the vision of KreditBee to formalize the path towards credit enablement for new-to-credit customers, their skilled team and responsible tech-enabled underwriting, and are pleased to partner with them in their next stage of growth," Atul Gupta, Partner at Premji Invest, said.