Exclusive: Avail Finance raises $11.5 Mn round from Alphawave and Matrix

Blue collar-focused lending startup, Avail Finance has raised Rs 85.6 crore~$11.5 million in a Series B funding round from Alphawave Incubation Fund and Matrix Partners. The fresh round for the Bengaluru-based company has come after a gap of 13 months.

Alphawave Incubation which is managed by Falcon Edge Capital led the latest round by infusing Rs 57 crore, while the existing backer, Matrix Partners poured in Rs 30.2 crore. 

Avail Finance has made an allotment of 423044 Series B CCPS and 10 equity shares at an issue price of Rs 2060.25 to raise the above-mentioned amount, shows regulatory filings. Post allotment, Matrix Partners will be one of the biggest stakeholders in the company, commanding 26.4%, whereas Alphawave has picked up 11.5% in the company.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates,  Avail Finance has been valued north of Rs 500 crore in this transaction. In its last tranche of funding, the company had secured around $3 million from Ola back in July 2019. 

Before that, it had raised $9 million from existing investor Matrix Partners India in June last year. Backed by the likes of Ola founders Ankit Bhati, Bhavish Aggarwal, Cred founder Kunal Shah, Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal and Mswipe’s founder Manish Patel, the company has raked in over $37 million since its inception. 

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. It provides collateral-free personal loans of up to Rs 20,000 to meet their financial needs. According to the company, there is no interest for a personal loan of Rs 5,000 for a month.

Having partnered with blue-collar workforces of service aggregators such as Ola, Swiggy, Ecom Express, Quess Corp to provide financial products to their workers, the platform claims to have cumulatively disbursed loans of over Rs 250 crore to one million customers as of January 2020.

Updated: Typo regarding deal valuation.