Faircent raises funding from Aarin

Peer-to-peer lending marketplace Faircent, run by Fairassets Technologies India Pvt Ltd, has received an undisclosed amount of investment from Aarin Capital Partners.

As a part of the deal, TV Mohandas Pai, designated partner at Aarin Capital, will join the advisory board of the company.

Aarin Capital is jointly run by Mohandas Pai and Manipal Group's Ranjan Pai (not related to each other).

"There is a huge under-served market that has no access to credit and curated P2P lending is an excellent way to service it. Faircent not only creates access, it brings down the cost of the capital for these individuals and businesses through its unique reverse auction engine," said Mohandas Pai.

The Gurgaon-based company had earlier received $250,000 (Rs 1.52 crore) in its pre-Series A funding round from Singapore-based M&S Partners Pte Ltd in June this year. Prior to that, it had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Devesh Sachdev and Ashish Tiwari (promoters of Fusion Microfinance Pvt Ltd) in January.

The startup was founded in 2013 by Rajat Gandhi, Vinay Mathews and Nitin Gupta. Gandhi has over 17 years of experience, of which 13 years have been in the internet space. Prior to co-founding Faircent, Mathews had served as country head (sales and service delivery) at Timesjobs. Gupta has served at senior positions at MasterCard, GE Capital and Rediff.com and was a non-executive co-founder of LetsBuy, an electronics e-tailer that was acquired by Flipkart in 2012.

Faircent has developed proprietary technology to enable credit appraisal and borrower rating systems, and had recently announced alliances with TransUnion and Yodlee. "We don't have the high intermediation costs as we leverage technology; so borrowers receive the direct benefit of the lean and  technology enhanced operations," said Mathews.

This is Pai's first investment in the fintech sector. He has also invested in car rental startup Zoomcar, exam preparation platform OnlineTyari, wearable health devices maker GetActive, tax information site Taxsutra.com and media website YourStory.