Digital lending platform for SMEs Lendingkart Technologies, through its arm Lendingkart Finance eyes Rs. 1,500-1,600 crore worth of loan disbursements over the next one year, according to top company officials.
The 3-year-old city-based fintech startup looks at a massive growth over its current loan portfolio of around Rs. 500 crore as it increases its focus on SME lending in Gujarat, where a large number of SMEs from variety of sectors are located.
“Initially we started with lending to e-commerce platforms, but now we look at higher share of loan portfolio coming from non e-commece players. Gujarat has witnessed phenomenal growth in the past few years and SMEs have played critical role in development of the state,” said Mukul Sachan, co-founder & COO, Lendingkart Technologies.
He added that so far the company has disbursed loans to over 1,000 SMEs in Gujarat’s tier 2 and tier 3 cities such as Morbi, Deesa, Junagadh, Nadiad and Bhavnagar.
The company has raised a total funding of $45 million or Rs. 288 crore through a mix of debt and equity since June last year.
“We registered a robust growth of 300 per cent over last year in loan disbursement. In next one year, we expect to achieve overall lending of Rs. 1,500-1,600 crore,” said Sachan. Lendingkart provides loans in the ticket size of Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 10 lakh or even more with average ticket size of Rs. 5 lakh. The SME customers of the company include apparel/textiles players, electronics outlet owners or white goods retailers among others.
The company takes help of big data analysis through advanced technology to make loan disbursement process simpler, seamless and quick for SMEs. “These are unsecured loans, and approved and disbursed as quickly as in 24- 72 hours from the time of application. Depending on the risk profile of the applicant, we charge interest rate anywhere between 16-24 per cent per annum,” said Sachan.
However, the company provides loans for a tenure ranging from one month to one year with convenient repayment schedule. Sachan claims to have 2-3 times better NPAs than some of the leading lenders including banks.
[Source:-thehindu]
