Online financial services provider Global Analytics raises $30M from Crystal Financial

India and US-based Global Analytics Holdings, Inc., an analytics-driven and web-based financial services company focusing on the under-banked population globally, has secured $30 million (Rs 180 crore) in debt funding from Crystal Financial LLC, an independent commercial finance company in the US.

With this round, Global Analytics' total fundraising reached $95 million ($50 million in equity funding and $45 million in debt). The firm had earlier raised funds from Crosslink Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures and QED Investors, as well as from a few strategic advisors.

"The additional capital will help us grow at 50 per cent through 2013-2014. A part of the funds will be used to boost our existing online lending operations in the UK and also to finance our expansion into the US," Mukund Venkatesh, vice-president & general manager (India operations), told Techcircle.in.

US-based investment banker Stephens, Inc., advised Global Analytics on the fresh round of fund raising.

Founded in 2003 by Krishna Gopinathan (president and COO) and Purna Patnaik (chief information officer), Global Analytics is a B2C company providing a wide range of financial services products to under-banked consumers who don't have adequate access to credit and banking services. Gopinathan, who holds a master's degree in Computer Science (Graph Theoretic Algorithms) from the University of Waterloo, also served as the chief executive at Global Analytics from 2003 to 2009. Prior to setting up the firm, he had founded Burning Glass Technologies. Earlier, he was vice-president at Fraud Control Systems and also worked with Symbolic Computation Group, University of Waterloo and Bell Northern Research, where he served as a Member of Scientific Staff. His partner Patnaik holds a B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and an MS and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to taking over the role of CIO, he had served as the CFO and the COO at Global Analytics.

Although headquartered in San Diego (California), the firm has its technical centre in Chennai and additional offices in Delhi and Gurgaon with a 400-plus team operating in the country. It also has an office in the UK.

As of now, Global Analytics offers two distinctive services to individual borrowers through Lending Stream and Zebit. Lending Stream provides 6 months' emergency term loans, powered by same-day approval and cash deployment. Zebit is a short-term lending platform that offers loans with flexible repayment options. It also runs an affordability analysis to evaluate whether one would be able to repay the loan. Zebit allows one to choose the repayment tenure (varying from 1 week to 12 months) and also offers lower interest rates based on the customer's credit quality.

Crystal Financial is an independent commercial finance company that provides senior and junior secured loans for asset-based and cashflow financing. It has underwritten, closed and managed more than $20 billion in secured debt commitments across a wide range of industries.

Last week, analytics services provider Fractal Analytics raised $25 million in funding from private equity investor TA Associates.

In December 2011, Chicago and Bangalore-based data analytics firm Mu Sigma raised $108 million in an investment round led by General Atlantic. In June that year, it had also secured $25 million in Series C from Sequoia Capital.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)