Matrix, founders of Flipkart, Ola, Freecharge, and Mswipe infuse $17.2 Mn in Avail Finance

Online lending startup Avail Finance, which focuses on blue-collared workforce, has raised $17.2 million in a Series A round of funding through equity, debt and credit lines led by Matrix Partners.

The Bengaluru-based firm also saw participation from Ola's Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal, Freecharge founder Kunal Shah, Flipkart founder Binny Bansal along with Mswipe founder Manish Patel.

The company plans to use the funds to expand its business and also build its loan book. Besides, it aims to enter into a line of credit business as well.

Founded by Ankush Aggarwal(brother of Ola's founder Bhavish) and Tushar Mehndiratta in February 2017, Avail Finance caters to India’s blue-collared workforce (office boys, cleaning staff, and others), who are currently underserved by organized lending institutions.

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With low credit card penetration and the lack of structured credit history, this large segment of the Indian population resorts to availing credit from informal sources at high-interest rates.

Leveraging alternate digital data and the power of the India stack (Aadhaar, eKYC, UPI), Avail Finance aims to create a seamless lending and repayment process to serve this segment.

Lending within the broader range of Rs 5000 to 60,000 for an average tenure of eight months, the non-banking finance company has tied up with more than 12 corporate entities to source its prospective borrowers.

Last year the company claims to have given out about 4,000 loans and the loan book is at about Rs 5 crore. It aims to reach Rs 100 crore mark by the end of current fiscal.

So far, Avail Finance has raised about $200,000 from friends and family.

The development was reported by ET.