Veritas Finance, a Chennai-based financial services firm that lends to micro and small enterprises, has raised Rs 55 crore in debt financing from a Belgium-based fund manager, Incofin Investment Managment, and BlueOrchard, a global impact investment firm.
The Chennai-based NBFC firm had raised Series B funding of Rs 120 crore from Lok Capital and CDC Group in December, last year. During Series B financing round Veritas had said that it is on course to achieving a loan book of Rs 330-350 crore by the end of FY18.
Veritas has kicked off operations with an initial capital of Rs 13.60 crore and raised additional equity of Rs 30 crore from Lok Capital, Caspian Impact Investment Adviser, and others in series A round in 2016.
Incorporated in 2015, Veritas Finance was registered as a non-banking financial company (NBFC) by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in October 2015. It provides long-term finance for business expansion as well as shorter-term loans for working capital needs.
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The loan amount would depend on the requirement of the enterprises, for a normal tenure of 5 years. Veritas also considers higher loan amount and a longer tenure for the customers after assessing the nature of the business and the requirement.
So far Veritas has raised a total of Rs 300 Cr (excluding this round) in equity and debt financing from investors including CDC Group, Swiss Fund, AAV Sarl, and Lok Capital.
With over 14,000 customers on board, the MSME-focused startup has around 700 employees in 68 branches and 100 micro-centres in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, West Bengal and Odisha.
Of late, Zerodha, a technology-driven zero brokerage firm has got NBFC license from RBI. Initially, the Bengaluru-based company aims to start with small value, short-term loans to consumers collateralised against their securities. It will provide small ticket size loan which could be as low as Rs 5,000 and target lending of Rs 200 crore in the first year.
The development was reported by Paper.vc.
