Saama Capital leads $4.2 Mn round in blue-collar lender Shubh Loans

Blue-collar focused digital lending platform Shubh Loans has raised $4.2 million in an investment led by venture capital firm Saama Capital.

The Bengaluru-based fintech startup’s existing investors--SRI Capital, Beenext and Pravega Ventures also participated in the round.

The current fundraising appears to be Series A round, however, it couldn’t be verified. The funding for Shubh Loans comes after a year when it had raised $1.6 million in pre-Series A fund from the existing investors in September 2017.

The fresh capital would be primarily deployed towards ramping up technology and data science team.

Incorporated in 2016 by Monish Anand, Rahul Sekar, Anand Barua and Tushar Patel, Shubh Loans provides a proprietary credit score and report for loan applicants, who can borrow from any of its nine banking and NBFC partners.

Via its vernacular app, the digital lender focuses on lower-income groups with an annual income of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 4.5 lakh. Its average loan size currently hovers around Rs 68,000.

Like other incumbent digital lenders, Shubh Loans is planning to apply for an NBFC licence, which will help it to co-lend with partners.

Besides, the digital lender now also prepares to begin disbursing loans to self-employed people such as kirana shop owners and other small shop owners.

The startup claims to have disbursed Rs 35 crore in the financial year 2017-18 and is targeting to cross Rs 150 crore of lending in current fiscal.

Previously, it had raised an undisclosed investment round led by Sanjai Vohra, former Managing Director, Jp Morgan in November 2016.

Other well-established players in this space are Capital Float, Lendingkart, Flexi loans, Money Tap, CreditMantri, including several others.

The development was reported by Mint.