India's Namaste Credit Among KPMG’s Top 100 Fintechs Globally

AI-enabled SME Lending platform, Namaste Credit, announced that it’s been featured in KPMG’s Top 100 Fintechs 2019 Global list.

The 2019 Fintech100-Leading Global Fintech Innovators report is a collaborative effort between H2 Ventures and KPMG and analyses the fintech space globally. The Fintech100 comprises a ‘Top 50’ and an ‘Emerging 50’ list and highlights those companies globally that are taking advantage of technology and driving disruption within the financial services industry.

Namaste Credit is featured among Emerging Top 50 fintech list. The ‘Emerging 50’ firms are newer companies that are at the forefront of innovative technologies and practices.
8 Indian fintechs made it to this year’s list, which is complied by H2 Ventures and KPMG.

“Namaste Credit’s presence in the ‘The Fintech 100’ 2019 is a testimony to our hard work, which has been noted by global leaders like KPMG and H2 Ventures. We are extremely proud of this achievement as it cements our conviction that our business is heading in the right direction. We believe that technology can significantly reform the SME lending industry and we will continue to scale it to bring more innovation in the space”, says Gaurav Anand, co-founder of Namaste Credit.

“We dedicate this achievement to our employees, who have been our pillars of strength; our customers, channel partners, and our investors for their confidence and support in working with us”, adds Lucas Bianchi, co-founder, Namaste Credit.

Namaste Credit Consolidates Offerings for MSMEs as a Neobank

Online lending marketplace Namaste Credit today said that it is launching its Neobanking solutions for MSMEs, becoming a full-fledged "Digital-Only Bank" with a foundational SaaS play. As a Neobank, Namaste Credit aims to become the first Neobank to offer a one- stop financial services provider for MSMEs, offering automated credit, banking and accounting solutions.

Namaste Credit Neobank will offer numerous tailor-made products via a soon-to-be-launched “Namaste Biz” app to address multiple, inter-related financial needs of MSMEs, including centralizing their cash flow and banking and credit management.

“We believe a technology-based integrated platform that can bring together banks, NBFCs and other stakeholders can completely transform the financial services industry, specially from a B2B perspective. As a Neobank, we are confident to achieve precisely that, which will ultimately put us in a unique position to serve the MSME banking needs end-to-end, and at lower costs,” says Lucas Bianchi, the co-founder and Director of Namaste Credit. 

India has over 50 large banks and NBFCs, who use over 100,000 Direct Selling Agents (DSAs) and offline channels to reach the over 30 million MSMEs in India.

“Our transition to a Neobank will not only help the startup get a firmer grip into the Banking & NBFC ecosystem but also balance revenues with customer acquisition costs to maintain a profitable growth path,” Mr. Bianchi added.

Namaste Credit said it is growing 20% month-on-month in the SME credit segment, as more financial institutions are adopting the technology and

automation path. In less than 18 months, the startup has emerged as the largest SaaS automation provider for comprehensive credit underwriting for India's Financial Institutions.

The startup is leveraging its proprietary technology powered by AI, NLP and computer vision in SME credit application sourcing and processing, to solve real-world problems of SME credit.

Gaurav Anand, co-founder and director, Namaste Credit says, "This transition will help our partner Financial Institutions to get real-time insights into their lending customers, underwrite better and cross-sell other products. Cross-selling takes time, and if the revenue model is based on cross-sell commissions and SaaS fee from SMEs, it can take a long time to break-even. We saw this across many Neobanks globally and are looking to solve this problem by overlaying our Neobank over an existing business, which will allow us to be profitable from the start".

“This innovation in business model will create a substantial competitive advantage for us in three key aspects: accelerate customer and channel acquisition, reduce operational costs significantly, and finally, allow us to expand quickly to global markets,” Mr. Anand added.

Namaste Credit raised $3.8 million in Series-A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners in 2018. It also plans to grow the number of its technology licensing partnerships with leading lenders across the globe.

Fintech Startup Namaste Credit wins SKOCH Order-of Merit Awards, 2019

Namaste Credit, India’s leading AI-based credit discovery platform for MSMEs today was announced the winner of 2019 SKOCH Order-of Merit Awards, for its AI-based credit assessment solution for banks and NBFCs. The fintech startup was declared the winner during the 58th SKOCH Summit on 29th June 2019 with the underlying theme of ‘ModiNomics 2.0 - Macroeconomic Agenda’, at Constitution Club of India, Rafi Marg, New Delhi. Namaste Credit has won the prestigious award post a very stringent evaluation process, qualifying three parameters, namely -Early Bird, Jury Evaluation and Popular Vote.

SKOCH Award was instituted in 2003 and is the highest civilian honour in the country conferred by an independent organisation. It recognises people, projects and institutions that go the extra mile to make India a better nation, especially in the fields of finance, governance, banking, disaster management, technology, economics and inclusive growth.

Krishnan Parameswaran, co-founder and CTO, Namaste Credit says, “We are incredibly delighted to have won the prestigious SKOCH award for 2019. This win is a prominent recognition of our efforts towards bringing digital and financial inclusion of India most significant pillar of growth – the MSMEs. We have always been a technology innovation driven company and will continue to keep the momentum high."

Namaste Credit was founded in 2014 by Gaurav Anand, Lucas Bianchi and Krishnan Parameswaran. The startup has filed three patents for its AI-driven technology platform, which allows banks to reduce turnaround times for loan approval from three days to three hours. Further, their technology also leads to loan approval rates of 70% or above, which is the highest in the industry. They can achieve this through pre-qualifying SMEs using Big Data and matching them to lenders using their proprietary algorithms.

Namaste Credit raised $3.8 million in Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners in 2018. It also plans to grow the number of its technology licensing partnerships with leading lenders across the globe.

Amazon AWS Recognizes Namaste Credit’s AI-based Credit Assessment Solution for Banks and NBFCs

Bangalore-based Namaste Credit, a leading AI-based credit discovery and assessment platform, today announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recognized its groundbreaking usage of AI to process SME loan applications more efficiently.

Namaste Credit’s AI-based credit assessment solution for banks and NBFCs allows them gather, categorize, and analyze data from scanned documents, thus reducing processing time for complex loans from over 3 days to under 3 hours.

The company has filed three patents on its product offering and licenses it to lenders as a SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services and can be deployed quickly.

In a special keynote address delivered at AWS FinTech Day, which brought together key stakeholders from the financial community to discuss India’s future in FinTech, Lucas Bianchi, co-founder and director, Namaste Credit said that banks and NBFCs using its AI-based solution are able to significantly improve their underwriting of SMEs.

“We are leveraging AI and NLP in SME credit application sourcing and processing. It is built to solve real-world problems of SME credit, thereby creating an impact in the SME ecosystem. Today, our product is helping leading banks and NBFCs to automate credit assessment and make credit decision more intelligent and seamless”, Mr. Bianchi added.

In 2018 Namaste Credit raised $3.8 million in a Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners. It plans to further grow the number of its technology licensing partnerships with leading lenders in India and across the globe.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Bangalore, the company has set up an online platform that improves the entire loan process from application to underwriting.

Another Fintech Startup Namaste Credit Raises $3.8 Mn from Nexus Venture Partners

New Delhi-based Namaste Credit, an another fintech category startup has raised USD 3.8 million (~ Rs 24.70 crore) in series A round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners. Namaste credit is essentially a digital marketplace for SME loans.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds to grow its geographic footprint, enhance technology and data analytics platform and further scale its businesses. Beside, it also plans to significantly increase its channel partner program across India and further expand its technology licensing partnerships with leading lenders globally, the statement added.

Founded in 2014 by Lucas Bianchi (ex-executives at Moody's), Gaurav Anand and Krishnan Parameswaran (ex-executive atGE), Namaste Credit claims to be India's first online marketplace for loans. Its lender app on Android platform helps the lenders to give loan offers, accept meetings, see loan status details and much more. Over the last 12 months, disbursement volumes through Namaste Credits platform have increased over 10X with participation of over 30 institutional lenders.

"Our technology platform enables lenders to identify potential underwriting issues much faster and also prevent intentional fraud. We provide predictive analytics on banking and financial data of SMEs very efficiently, which helps lenders more accurately assess and price risk," Anand said.

Sunstone Capital, run by ex-McKinsey and Bank of America professionals, acted as the exclusive financial adviser for this transaction.

The above development was first reported in Times of India.

Notably, fintech space continue to be the most invested segment among startups in India. According to a NASSCOM report published in November 2017 Fintech, along with healthcare, are most funded segments of startups in India, in past one year. The total number of startups in the fintech space has gone up to 360 from 275 in 2016, thus registering 31% growth in the number of startups.

Few days back Bangalore-based fintech startup SmartCoin had raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from a top Shanghai headquartered VC fund and Accion Venture Lab. Prior to this, Cash Suvidha, a Delhi-based fintech startup, raised $1 million pre-Series A funding from Initia Holdings Ltd.

In February, a Mumbai based fintech startup Fincash.com raised $150,000 in funding from angel investors including like Mohammed Khan (Founder of Rediffusion), Sameer Narayan (ex- Fund Manager BNP Paribas), among others. Prior to that, a Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions raised $13.2 million in its Series A funding from investors including Social Capital, JS Capital LLC (the family office of Jonathan Soros), and Horizons Ventures and existing investor Prime Venture Partners.

Last November, an Artificial intelligence-powered fintech startup Active.Ai raised $8.25 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator.

Other fintech start-ups that have raised funds recently include ZipLoan, Kissht, Shubh Loans, Stashfin, LoanMeet and others.

Other lending-based startups with which Namaste Credit competes are CapitalFloat, NeoGrowth, and LendingKart.

Another Fintech Startup Namaste Credit Raises $3.8 Mn from Nexus Venture Partners

New Delhi-based Namaste Credit, an another fintech category startup has raised USD 3.8 million (~ Rs 24.70 crore) in series A round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners. Namaste credit is essentially a digital marketplace for SME loans.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds to grow its geographic footprint, enhance technology and data analytics platform and further scale its businesses. Beside, it also plans to significantly increase its channel partner program across India and further expand its technology licensing partnerships with leading lenders globally, the statement added.

Founded in 2014 by Lucas Bianchi (ex-executives at Moody's), Gaurav Anand and Krishnan Parameswaran (ex-executive atGE), Namaste Credit claims to be India's first online marketplace for loans. Its lender app on Android platform helps the lenders to give loan offers, accept meetings, see loan status details and much more. Over the last 12 months, disbursement volumes through Namaste Credits platform have increased over 10X with participation of over 30 institutional lenders.

"Our technology platform enables lenders to identify potential underwriting issues much faster and also prevent intentional fraud. We provide predictive analytics on banking and financial data of SMEs very efficiently, which helps lenders more accurately assess and price risk," Anand said.

Sunstone Capital, run by ex-McKinsey and Bank of America professionals, acted as the exclusive financial adviser for this transaction.

The above development was first reported in Times of India.

Notably, fintech space continue to be the most invested segment among startups in India. According to a NASSCOM report published in November 2017 Fintech, along with healthcare, are most funded segments of startups in India, in past one year. The total number of startups in the fintech space has gone up to 360 from 275 in 2016, thus registering 31% growth in the number of startups.

Few days back Bangalore-based fintech startup SmartCoin had raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from a top Shanghai headquartered VC fund and Accion Venture Lab. Prior to this, Cash Suvidha, a Delhi-based fintech startup, raised $1 million pre-Series A funding from Initia Holdings Ltd.

In February, a Mumbai based fintech startup Fincash.com raised $150,000 in funding from angel investors including like Mohammed Khan (Founder of Rediffusion), Sameer Narayan (ex- Fund Manager BNP Paribas), among others. Prior to that, a Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions raised $13.2 million in its Series A funding from investors including Social Capital, JS Capital LLC (the family office of Jonathan Soros), and Horizons Ventures and existing investor Prime Venture Partners.

Last November, an Artificial intelligence-powered fintech startup Active.Ai raised $8.25 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator.

Other fintech start-ups that have raised funds recently include ZipLoan, Kissht, Shubh Loans, Stashfin, LoanMeet and others.

Other lending-based startups with which Namaste Credit competes are CapitalFloat, NeoGrowth, and LendingKart.