Mumbai-based fintech startup CreditVidya has raised ₹21 crores ($3 million) in Series C round of funding from Bharat Innovation Fund as well as from founding members of Falcon Edge Capital – Ryan Koury, Navroz D. Udwadia and Rick Gerson. The startup plans to use the freshly raised capital to expand its credit underwriting services to companies in various sectors across the nation.
Founded in 2013 by Abhishek Agarwal and Rajiv Raj, CreditVidya is a fintech platform powered by artificial intelligence that provides credit underwriting APIs to NBFCs and other financial institutions. It helps financial lenders to make critical decisions based on credit scores assigned to new-to-credit customers who have a little or no credit history.
Abhishek Agarwal, CEO and Co-founder of CreditVidya, says, “Fintech today is going to drive monetisation, and credit is going to be the underlying factor that determines this shift. With more organisations looking to give financing options and seeking NBFC licensing, underwriting is going to be important. With our existing capabilities, companies can look at different underwriting and financial models, that in turn can be linked to a bank and extend credit to the company’s customer.”
It uses non-traditional data sources including behavioural data like pending payments or categories of purchases, social networks and transactional data like recharges and e-commerce spends to calculate a customers credit score. The information is collected from the borrower’s smartphone and e-mails with their proper permission.
Sanjay Jain, Partner at Bharat Innovation Fund, said, “Our decision to invest in CreditVidya was driven by its ability to produce the most advanced credit underwriting platform and products in the country, along with a strong alignment with our larger mission of using deep tech innovation to enable financial inclusion.”
Earlier it raised ₹35 crores ($5 million) in its series B round from Matrix Partners and Kalaari Capital in September 2017. Prior to that in June 2016, the startup raised ₹7 crores ($1 million) in series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital. The startup has raised a total of ₹70 crores ($10 million) in funding from investors since its inception.
CreditVidya will use big data and deep tech to help banks and other entities expand the coverage of unsecured, retail and working capital loans. The startup has profiled more than 1.3 crore customers and has partnered with 40 leading banks and NBFCs like SBI, HDFC, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, RBL Bank, Tata Capital, YES Bank, Bajaj Finserv and several others.
