Lending Startup SmartCoin Raises Rs 80 Crores in Debt Funding from Northern Arc, Vivriti Capital, MAS and Others

Rohit Garg, Co-Founder & CEO - SmartCoin

The funding is slated to fuel the credit strength of the fintech enterprise and accelerate its mission to enable financial products for the next billion users

Bangalore, 20th July 2021: SmartCoin Financials, India’s first fully-automated ML powered fintech platform for Bharat, announced that it has secured debt funding from multiple financial institutions including Northern Arc, Vivriti Capital, MAS, India SME and others.

SmartCoin is on a mission to enable digital financial services to a vastly underserved middle and lower-income segment that consists of over 300 million micro-entrepreneurs, micro-merchants, and gig and blue-colored workforce. Smartcoin has raised a debt funding amount of INR 80 Crores to further its portfolio 10x with expansion in customized products and services. The company has seen a strong demand for micro-credit from tier 2 and tier 3 cities across the country through the second wave as people grappled with lack of capital for medical situations and businesses. As our economy recovers, the company aims to boost the small businesses, and growing middle & lower income users with expanded credit products via their mobile app. SmartCoin has already served over 6 million users across 18000+ pin codes across the country in a 100% digital and automated manner.

Commenting on the funding initiative, Mr. Rohit Garg, Co-Founder & CEO, Smartcoin Financials, said, "We are more than pleased to have secured substantial funding from marquee investors like Northern Arc and Vivriti Capital. The last year has proved to be a litmus test for the relatively young fintech industry. For us, our focus on vast untapped Bharat opportunity, strong performance through the pandemic and managing among the lowest NPAs has led to a strong vote of confidence from the investor community. This timely injection of funds shall be leveraged to advance our vision of empowering financial inclusion and develop India into a financial superpower."

He also added, "The pandemic has led to strong digital adoption in the middle/lower-income segments across Tier2+ geographies, and with our unique insights and understanding of the financial and behavioral data for this segment, we are expanding into new products for empowering our customers with better control of their financial lives. "

Bama Balakrishnan, COO of Northern Arc, said "We are excited to partner with SmartCoin for enabling credit opportunities to the vast underserved middle and lower-income segments of the country. We believe that utilizing the digital infrastructure through innovative solutions is the key to empower millions of small businesses, merchants, and professionals. The relationship between Northern Arc and SmartCoin is at multiple levels – We have funded them through our Balance Sheet, raised capital from other investors through syndication and guarantee products and have a retail lending partnership with them. We hope to deepen and expand these partnerships going forward."

"Excited to be part of SmartCoin’s growth journey and helping them propel towards becoming a fully digital lender for Emerging India. Excellent pedigree of the founding team along with backing of marquee investors makes SmartCoin stand apart. SmartCoin’s expertise in consumer lending via innovative products coupled with its tech capability makes it a perfect partner for capturing the missing middle in the growing Emerging Indian base," says Gautam Jain, Business Head - Vivriti Capital.

By underlining the need to provide instant affordable credit access to the hugely underserved middle-income and lower-income groups and raising consumer awareness, SmartCoin endeavors to ride the next wave of Indian growth. Its unique data-driven approach towards ushering financial inclusion for the neglected segments of the Indian population has been highly scalable and efficient as the company has managed to register an over 20% month-on-month growth. In the next few years, SmartCoin Financials will prepare itself to achieve the next phase of targeted exponential growth and envision reaching more than 50X-60X of its present performance levels.

Micro-lending Startup for Emerging India SmartCoin Raises over $7 Mn from LGT LightstoneAspada, Others

App based consumer lending startup SmartCoin has raised over $7 million in Series A funding from LGT LightstoneAspada and existing investors Unicorn India Ventures and Accion Venture Lab.

SmartCoin lends to a large underserved market hitherto not served by banks, NBFCs, or microfinance institutions. The company’s product offering includes small ticket personal loans to micro merchants, self-employed and salaried individuals, who mainly borrow to fund their economic advancement. Use cases include working capital for micro-merchants, fuel and vehicle repair funding for delivery executives; vocational training for micro-entrepreneurs and emergency medical needs of blue/grey collar workers.

Rohit Garg, Co-founder CEO, SmartCoin, said, “Our goal has been to provide access to credit to those underserved by the formal banking system. Our proprietary AI/ML powered risk-assessment engine enables loan-approval within minutes and provides credit through a hassle-free, completely automated process. Deeper insights into the customer’s financial and behavioral data, combined with a gamified ladder, enables unlocking better products over time. Our choice to build for the credit-starved mass market and strong portfolio performance has helped SmartCoin stand out in a crowded fin-tech market. We are delighted to have LGT LightstoneAspada come on-board alongside our other investors given their experience in financial services and focus on impact."

SmartCoin began operations in 2017 and has since then, scaled rapidly serving customers across all the states and over 95% districts of India. The company has offered loans amounting to over 400 crores to half a million customers, with a pan-India user base of over five million. They have also received an NBFC license in October 2019.

With a differentiated and scalable business model built on a suite of AI/ML engines that are trained over terabytes of data, SmartCoin has been recognized internationally among the Top-50 startups driving financial inclusion around the globe by the likes of Visa, IFC and Metlife. The company was also the only fintech startup in 2019 to successfully graduate from both Google’s Launchpad Accelerator program and its App Excellence program for its advanced data- driven, mobile- first approach.

Kartik Srivatsa, Managing Partner, LGT LightstoneAspada, commented, “We are excited to back, in SmartCoin, one of the strongest teams in machine learning and AI in financial services. The company has already built the foundations of what could be one of the important fintech platforms in India that delivers personalized financing products at an affordable cost to underserved households towards their goal to building positive financial net worth. SmartCoin’s business model has the ability to provide data-driven insights in a customer segment that is otherwise opaque and can unlock means of formal credit and financial services. We believe that their AI/ML engine can over a period of time also deliver personalized digital services in areas such as education and healthcare for this segment."

SmartCoin plans to use the current round of funding to primarily grow their loan book. SmartCoin also plans to expand its data science team, advancing their AI/ML-based underwriting platform, launching new products and growing its user base to 10M.

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “We identified Smartcoin quite early in their journey and decided to invest in the company. We were quite impressed with the market segment that Smartcoin wanted to address as most other fintechs at the time were chasing white collars that still have credit history in terms of digital spending. But Rohit and his team decided to penetrate perhaps the most difficult customer segment. Their thesis that people are willing to payback if given hassle free loans and their ability to keep their NPAs lowest in their industry has prompted us to continue to invest in the Company."

Vikas Raj, Managing Director, Accion Venture Lab, added, “SmartCoin’s data-driven and responsible approach to digital lending enables them to effectively reach underserved populations that lack access to credit. We’ve had great confidence in their team and strategy since making our initial investment and look forward to continuing our partnership."

Unitus Capital acted as an exclusive financial advisor to the transaction.

About SmartCoin

SmartCoin is an app based consumer lending startup focused on providing small-loans to the vast underserved lower- and middle-income segments comprising 45% of population (~500M individuals)- micro merchants, micro entrepreneurs, and blue/grey workers. Banks and NBFCs find it difficult to serve them due to lack of credit histories and expensive operating models resulting from their offline manual processes and legacy technology systems. Our data driven mobile-first approach with proprietary AI/ML underwriting algorithms are capable of assessing the risk profile of a prospective borrower in real time and delivering the loan through a completely digital manner. We have re-engineered the complete loan cycle to make it entirely automated, fast, convenient and personalized for the customer. SmartCoin’s advanced AI/ML has been recognized by Google and is the only fintech startup in 2019 to have been part of both its Launchpad Accelerator program and the App Excellence program.

LGT LightstoneAspada

Formed in partnership with Aspada and LGT in August 2019, LGT LightstoneAspada is the India focused impact investment platform of LGT Lightstone. LGT Lightstone is LGT Group's impact investing initiative to build a global multi-billion dollar direct investing platform focused on scalable businesses that provide access to improved livelihoods, information and services for underserved consumers around the world and/or promote sustainable resource utilization.

Accion Venture Lab

Accion’s seed-stage investment initiative Accion Venture Lab provides capital and extensive support to innovative fintech startups that improve the reach, quality, and affordability of financial services for the underserved and have the potential to scale. Backed by commercial and impact investors since the launch of its third-party fund in 2019, Venture Lab has invested in more than 40 early-stage startups that operate in 30 countries worldwide. Venture Lab is a part of Accion, a global nonprofit committed to creating a financially inclusive world, with a pioneering legacy in microfinance and fintech impact investing. Accion catalyzes financial service providers to deliver high-quality, affordable solutions at scale for the three billion people who are left out of – or poorly served by – the financial sector. For more than 50 years, Accion has helped tens of millions of people through our work with more than 110 partners in 50 countries. For further information, visit https://www.accion.org/venturelab.

Unicorn India Ventures

Unicorn India Ventures is a Mumbai-based fund house started in 2015 by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar. The Fund House has also launched a UK India cross border fund for funding UK startups looking to enter India and have invested in 6 UK startups so far. From its first fund, UIV has invested in 18 companies like VLCC VanityCube, Inc42, Sequretek, Pharmarack, GrabonRent, Inntot, Genrobotic, SectorQube, Perfit, NeuroEquilibrium, SmartCoin, Open Bank, Boxx.ai, Clootrack and Openapp.

FinTech Startup SmartCoin Raises $2 Mn in Pre Series-A Funding Led By Shanghai-based VC

Bangalore-based fintech startup, SmartCoin, has raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from a top Shanghai headquartered VC fund and Accion Venture Lab. Unicorn India Ventures, which is an existing investor in the company, also participated in the round, along with ISME ACE, a leading fintech accelerator, announced the startup in a press release sent to IndianWeb2.

SmartCoin lends small-to-mid-sized ticket loans to mobile users after building a SmartCoin credit score, which is backed by data science and machine learning. The company raised seed funding from Unicorn India Ventures last year.

Rohit Garg, Co-founder and CEO, SmartCoin, says, “We have seen a sharp uptick in growth over the past year and have successfully disbursed over 50,000 micro loans. More importantly, we have been able to open credit access for people who were not able to tap the formal channels and were otherwise dependent on personal networks and loan sharks. With this round, we expect to grow the momentum and further scale 10X over the next 6–12 months. Having specialists as investors, who are passionate about micro-lending, on board will only help us cover more ground not only in India but globally too."

Accion Venture Lab is the world’s leading seed-stage investor in fintech for the underserved. Accion Venture Lab invests capital in, and provides support to, innovative fintech startups that increase access to, improve the quality of, or reduce the cost of financial services for the underserved at scale.

“SmartCoin illustrates how innovative lenders are leveraging data, mobile access, and India’s digital infrastructure to extend loan access for the financially underserved,” says Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. Paarul Dudeja, Director of Investments for India, Accion Venture Lab adds, “SmartCoin exemplifies what we at Accion Venture Lab look for in a partner, with its strong entrepreneurial team that is driven by the mission of providing increased access to credit through nano lending to the underserved by using an all-digital platform to expand its reach.”

SmartCoin was started by IIT/IIM alumnus Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Kumar Singh, and Jayant Upadhyay in 2016, who comes with around a decade of work experience across finance and technology domains.

“We invested in SmartCoin last year as we saw an immense potential in the business. Over the course of the year, we have realized the ability of the team to scale its operations rapidly given the right ammunition. Thus, being able to raise top dollar from two of the world’s largest markets is a testament to our belief in the team,” says Archana Priyadarshini, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures. “We expect the Company to continue its growth trajectory and at Unicorn India, we believe in backing potential winners. Thus, we decided to participate in this round,” she adds.

The Company is already working with several partners for disbursing loans and has achieved strong organic growth. SmartCoin plans to further invest in technology and grow its team as it continues with its expansion plans, with an aim to cover a much larger customer base.

FinTech Startup Fundings in Last Few Months -

Just yesterday, Cash Suvidha, a Delhi-based fintech startup, raised $1 million pre-Series A funding from Initia Holdings Ltd.

Last month, 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, Cash Suvidha, Kissht, Shubh Loans, Stashfin, LoanMeet and others.

To recall, according to a NASSCOM report published in November 2017 Fintech and 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.

Top Image - e27.co

FinTech Startup SmartCoin Raises $2 Mn in Pre Series-A Funding Led By Shanghai-based VC

Bangalore-based fintech startup, SmartCoin, has raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from a top Shanghai headquartered VC fund and Accion Venture Lab. Unicorn India Ventures, which is an existing investor in the company, also participated in the round, along with ISME ACE, a leading fintech accelerator, announced the startup in a press release sent to IndianWeb2.

SmartCoin lends small-to-mid-sized ticket loans to mobile users after building a SmartCoin credit score, which is backed by data science and machine learning. The company raised seed funding from Unicorn India Ventures last year.

Rohit Garg, Co-founder and CEO, SmartCoin, says, “We have seen a sharp uptick in growth over the past year and have successfully disbursed over 50,000 micro loans. More importantly, we have been able to open credit access for people who were not able to tap the formal channels and were otherwise dependent on personal networks and loan sharks. With this round, we expect to grow the momentum and further scale 10X over the next 6–12 months. Having specialists as investors, who are passionate about micro-lending, on board will only help us cover more ground not only in India but globally too."

Accion Venture Lab is the world’s leading seed-stage investor in fintech for the underserved. Accion Venture Lab invests capital in, and provides support to, innovative fintech startups that increase access to, improve the quality of, or reduce the cost of financial services for the underserved at scale.

“SmartCoin illustrates how innovative lenders are leveraging data, mobile access, and India’s digital infrastructure to extend loan access for the financially underserved,” says Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. Paarul Dudeja, Director of Investments for India, Accion Venture Lab adds, “SmartCoin exemplifies what we at Accion Venture Lab look for in a partner, with its strong entrepreneurial team that is driven by the mission of providing increased access to credit through nano lending to the underserved by using an all-digital platform to expand its reach.”

SmartCoin was started by IIT/IIM alumnus Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Kumar Singh, and Jayant Upadhyay in 2016, who comes with around a decade of work experience across finance and technology domains.

“We invested in SmartCoin last year as we saw an immense potential in the business. Over the course of the year, we have realized the ability of the team to scale its operations rapidly given the right ammunition. Thus, being able to raise top dollar from two of the world’s largest markets is a testament to our belief in the team,” says Archana Priyadarshini, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures. “We expect the Company to continue its growth trajectory and at Unicorn India, we believe in backing potential winners. Thus, we decided to participate in this round,” she adds.

The Company is already working with several partners for disbursing loans and has achieved strong organic growth. SmartCoin plans to further invest in technology and grow its team as it continues with its expansion plans, with an aim to cover a much larger customer base.

FinTech Startup Fundings in Last Few Months -

Just yesterday, Cash Suvidha, a Delhi-based fintech startup, raised $1 million pre-Series A funding from Initia Holdings Ltd.

Last month, 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, Cash Suvidha, Kissht, Shubh Loans, Stashfin, LoanMeet and others.

To recall, according to a NASSCOM report published in November 2017 Fintech and 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.

Top Image - e27.co

Unicorn India Ventures Invests In Bengaluru-based Smartcoin, A Micro Lending Platform

Unicorn India Ventures, a Mumbai-based VC firm, has announced its investment in Bangalore-based startup SmartCoin. Unicorn has led the round with participation from a clutch of angel investors. This is Unicorn’s seventh investment from its maiden fund. The Fund has already announced investments in six startups – Roder, Grab on Rent, VanityCube, Pharmarack, Inc42 and NeuroEquilibrium.

SmartCoin, a Bangalore-based data-driven micro lending startup, was started by IIT/IIM alumni Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Kumar Singh and Jayant Upadhyay last year, who come with around a decade of work experience across finance and technology domain before joining hands to start this venture.

SmartCoin is a mobile app based lending platform, capable of assessing the risk profile of a prospective borrower in real time, using data science and machine learning algorithms. Their proprietary credit underwriting engine aggregates thousands of data points on a customer’s smartphone, including financial transactions, device usage and app behavior, to build a customized credit score. A customer is instantly offered personalized loan products on the basis of his risk and capacity, and the money is transferred digitally to the bank account. All that a customer needs is a bank account, Aadhaar card and social media presence. The entire process, from app download to loan approval, takes less than five minutes providing an unprecedented customer experience.

“The idea behind SmartCoin is new age. The technology has been designed keeping the end customer at the heart of it, thus ensuring convenience in filling in their information and offering them a loan product suited to their needs. The concept of app based micro lending has proven successful in several other emerging markets and we see a huge potential in such a business model for India,” says Archana Priyadarshini, Venture Partner with Unicorn India Ventures, who has recently joined Unicorn to head their Bangalore office. She will also be joining the board of SmartCoin and will be working closely with the team to scale up their business.

Since its’ launch last quarter, SmartCoin has disbursed more than 3,000 loans and is growing over 50% MoM. SmartCoin plans to disburse 50,000 loans by the end of next financial year. The company is partnering with leading NBFCs and microfinance companies, who are looking to leverage their technology to expand customer base.

Rohit Garg, Co-founder and CEO, SmartCoin, says, “Traditional underwriting methods are largely reliant on credit histories, and thus unable to serve people with limited credit data. As a result, there is a huge underserved segment spanning not just the corporate workforce, but also the emerging aspirational class working in semi-white collar and blue-collar jobs. We believe credit should be accessible to everyone, and the process should be as simple as online shopping or cab booking.” He adds, “Long term partnerships with NBFCs are beneficial to everyone in the ecosystem. These borrowers, traditionally underserved by the financial institutions owing to thin-file or no-file data, are generating a lot of digital data as a result of deepening smartphone penetration. Our data-driven technology can score them more accurately reducing the risk of underwriting and opening newer growth avenues for NBFCs.”

The funding round raised will be used for upgrading technology platform and to scale up operations.

Unicorn has done the first close of their maiden fund. The Fund has already announced investments in startups like Grab on Rent, Inc42, Neuro Equilibrium, Vanity Cube, Roder, and Pharmarack.