Lendingkart raises $87 Mn Series C round from Temasek-owned Fullerton Financial Holdings

SME-focused fintech firm Lendingkart has raised $87 million in equity funding, led by Singapore’s Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH). The Ahmedabad-based lending startup also saw participation from existing investors in the Series C funding round.

FFH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek. Credit Suisse acted as an exclusive financial adviser to Lendingkart Technologies.

This is the fourth investment in Lendingkart after it raised three back-to-back investment in a matter of four months. It raised Rs 30 crore in January 2018, Rs 25 crore debt round by State Bank of India in December 2017 and Rs 162 crore in funding between August to September 2017.

Apart from SBI, the digital lending platform has onboarded two private sector banks — Kotak Mahindra Bank and Yes Bank as lenders.

The lending firm will deploy the fresh proceed towards strengthening its technology and analytics capabilities. Besides, the company also plans to expand its credit product offerings to deepen its reach to small enterprises.

With this, the firm cumulative funding (equity and debt) will exceed $173 million (Rs 1,129 crore), of which $114 million was through equity route.

Founded in 2014 by Harshavardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan, Lendingkart operates two entities – Lendingkart Technologies Pvt. Ltd and Lendingkart Finance.

Lendingkart uses technology tools based on big data analytics and machine learning algorithms to evaluate creditworthiness. Thousands of data points are used to assess factors like financial health, comparative market performance, social reliability and compliance and disburse loans.

So far the firm has evaluated more than one lakh applications, disbursed over 20,000 loans in more than 950 cities helping more than 13,000 SMEs, claims its website.

Last year, The Singapore government-owned investment company Temasek had reportedly touched the $10- billion investment mark in India, since its launch in India.

Earlier, this month Temasek-backed debt financing firm InnoVen Capital India is said to be deployed $75 million in the startup ecosystem, through debt financing in 2017. The firm also added 22 new companies to its portfolio, registering an annual growth of 25 per cent.

One of company's portfolio PolicyBazaar is expected to go public by the end of 2018. The insurance aggregator firm is also reportedly in talks with Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank Group for an investment at a valuation of around $800 million.

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