Loan against gold has been a traditional lending model that has largely been dominated by unorganised market and NBFCs. With the rise of fintech revolution in India, a clutch of startups, including Rupeek has been making such loan easy and quick.
The company’s approach to the problem and execution has been attracting blue-chip investors. After raising $30 million in August 2019, Rupeek has raised another $30 million from Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, GGV Capital and Korea’s KB Investments.
Existing backers include Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Bertelsmann also participated in the round. With this new financing round, Rupeek has raised $72 million in total risk capital. It will use proceeds towards accelerating growth and expansion.
Through partnering recognised lenders, Rupeek claims to offer hassle-free gold loans with minimal paperwork and fast processing. It provides two programmes – Regular E-pay plus (monthly interest rate) and No Tension Plus (fixed interest rate).
Three months ago, the firm claimed to disburse loans worth Rs 1,000 crore since its launch in 2016. According to its website, the company has presence over 2,000 locations across the country.
To ensure absolute fairness, scalability and standardization in gold purity valuation, Rupeek is also using its proprietary hardware. It leverages social media and searches engine marketing techniques to acquire a customer.
The gold-loan space in the organised market is largely dominated by traditional NBFCs such as Muthoot Finance and Manappuram Finance. However, they primarily operate through a network of offline outlets and agents. Rupeek has an advantage over them as it’s relying on digital channels for customer acquisition.
