Former Helion and UC-RNT CFO Natarajan Ranganathan joins Navi as executive director

Sachin Bansal’s digital lending platform Navi Technologies (formerly BACQ) has appointed Natarajan Ranganathan as executive director, regulatory filings show.  Ranganathan is a veteran personality in the venture capital space. He was formerly managing director and a chief financial officer or CFO of venture capital firm Helion Ventures.

After Helion, Ranganathan had served UC-RNT Fund as CFO and chief operating officer or COO. UC-RNT Fund is an alternative investment fund that partners RNT Associates (Ratan Tata) and the University of California.

Apart from his appointment on the board, Ranganathan also invested Rs 25 lakh in Navi, per regulatory filings.

With Ranganathan, Navi’s board now has four directors including Bansal, Nachiket Mor and Ankit Agarwal. Launched in May, Navi has emerged one of the top lending apps in India during the pandemic. Between May and September, the company had disbursed loans worth over Rs 130 crore.

Navi acquired Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services Private Limited or CRIDS in December last year and later rebranded it as Navi Finserv. In the past year, Bansal had infused Rs 3,563 crore in the company alone. 

Just before the launch of Navi, he led Rs 3,007 crore round with personal injection of Rs 2,675 crore. External investors in Navi include HDFC Bank managing director B. Paresh Suthankar, Samit Shetty and Anand Rao, co-founders of CRIDS, Paresh Sukthankar (former deputy MD, HDFC Bank); MS Gopalakrishnan (former sales & trading head at Standard Chartered) Narayanan Venkitaman (ex-head corporate banking at JP Morgan) and Shweta Mani (Data Head, Doxper).

At present, Bansal owns a little over 93% of Navi.

According to Entrackr sources, Bansal has been approached by several investors including Lee Fixel’s new fund Addition for a potential investment. However, he declined to take on any institutional investment in the near future. Bansal has set eyes on a universal banking licence for Navi and doesn’t want to dilute his stake until he receives clearance from the concerned regulators.

Navi declined to comment on the story.

With an aggressive lending strategy, Navi has laid out plans to achieve a loan book worth Rs 600-700 crore by the end of July-August next year. If the company successfully does so, it would definitely emerge as one of the top three lending apps after KreditBee and MoneyTap.