CreditVidya, a financial technology start-up that uses traditional as well as alternative data sources to provide customer profiling has raised $5 million in its series-B round of funding from venture capital (VC) firm Matrix Partners.
The funding also saw participation from its existing investor, Kalaari Capital who had invested in the company in 2016.
The Mumbai-based start-up will use the fund to add a wide range of fraud verification services and risk assessment means to its existing big data underwriting platform. The funds will also be used to further improve AI-based algorithms that use over 10,000 data points for risk assessment, in order to improve technology, said Abhishek Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive at CreditVidya.
The company uses non-traditional data sources such as the mobile phone recharge pattern of an individual, utility bill payments, e-commerce purchase behaviour etc. to provide a credit score for individuals who do not have a traditional credit score.
The company has five million unique customers and has partnered with more than 20 leading financial institutions in India in the last two years, said Agarwal.
By leveraging India Stack, the company manages to reduce the cost of underwriting for a small ticket loan by over 50% and reduce the turnaround time for loan disbursal from several days to less than 30 minutes. Most of the work done by the company so far is in unsecured products such as two-wheeler loans, personal loans and consumer durable loans, added Agarwal.
Launched in 2013, the start-up offers decision as a service with seamless integration into existing client systems. It has tied up with several financial institutions such as Bajaj Finserv, Fullerton India, Tata Capital, Aditya Birla Finance, Induslnd Bank, Shriram Housing Finance amongst others and gives these lenders the ability to score customers, minimize fraud rates and accelerate verification processes of potential customers.
The company had in June 2016 raised $2 million from Kalaari capital to expand its technology and data science team and strengthen its technology platform, Mint reported.
“We are very excited to partner with Abhishek and his team in their journey to building a pillar of the digital credit ecosystem. We think India’s fin-tech story is just getting started and will continue to invest in this sector”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director, Matrix Partners.
Matrix partners India invests in seed, early and early growth stage companies. Its portfolio comprises a mix of consumer focused companies like Ola, Mswipe, Quikr, Practo, Dailyhunt, Five-star finance etc.
CreditVidya has achieved a remarkable growth since the last round of funding. As lenders expand their retail credit portfolios, it is imperative that they decrease the cost of customer acquisition and reduce turnaround time without compromising on portfolio risk, said Bala Srinivasa, partner in Kalaari Capital.
Source: Mint