Online lending platform Capzest raises $200K from Lion Ventures, others

Wiseworks Technology Pvt Ltd, which runs digital lending platform Capzest, has raised $200,000 (around Rs 1.4 crore) in a seed funding round led by Lion Ventures.

Investors who participated in the round include Anurag Mehrotra, founder of Lion Ventures; Varun Dua, co-founder and CEO of Coverfox; Amit Tambe, former senior partner of Trilegal India and Vikas Jhunjhunwala, a Mumbai-based textile businessman.

The company plans to utilise the funds to strengthen its technology, marketing and operations team in addition to launching a number of new products, Rohan Adlakha, co-founder of Capzest told Techcircle.in.

Capzest partners with banks and NBFCs to provide personal loans and business loans to small and medium enterprises.

Adlakha said the company will introduce a number of products including education loans (for courses in both international and domestic institutions), personal vehicle loans and commercial loans soon.

Adlakha said Capzest offers unsecured personal loans of Rs 50,000-2 lakh at interest rates of 11.49-14 per cent. It charges 10-11 per cent interest on business loans starting from Rs 25 lakh and going up to Rs 5 crore.

Capzest has partnered with six financial institutions including Reliance Capital and Essel Finance and has received over 1500 applications for personal loans and 150 applications for SME loans so far, Adlakha said.

"Since the top end of the consumer pyramid is taken care of by banks and the bottom level of the pyramid is addressed by micro-finance institutions, it's the consumers at the mid-level that are our targets," he said.

Capzest was founded by IIT-Kharagpur alumni Sayantan Sarkar and Adlakha last year and the startup began its web operations in January this year. Earlier this month, Capzest released its mobile app.

Sarkar previously worked with Deutsche Bank while Adlakha was associated with Kharagpur Finance & Marketing Group, JPMorgan Chase and Rothschild before launching the fin-tech startup.

The Economic Times had first reported on the development.

The financial technology space has become a preferred one for venture capital and early stage investments in the country. There is heightened interest in this sector as several startups are using technology to disrupt the current systems of lending, borrowing, personal finance and financial inclusion in the country.

Finectar Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs online lending marketplace KountMoney, had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Suashish Diamonds Ltd's CMD Ashish Goenka and other investors through angel network Tracxn Syndicate in November 2015.

The same month also witnessed Loanbaba raising $320,000 in seed funding from an unnamed angel investor. IndiaLends, an online marketplace that connects lenders and borrowers for unsecured loans had raised $1 million in a bridge investment round led by existing investors DSG Consumer Partners, Siddharth Parekh and Gautham Radhakrishnan in October last year.

In September, Loancircle.in raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Toppr.com co-founder Zishaan Hayath, Trifecta Capital's managing director Rahul Khanna and other investors. In January, Gurgaon-based Fairassets Technologies, which is behind P2P lending marketplace Faircent, secured an undisclosed amount in funding from Devesh Sachdev and Ashish Tiwari (promoters of Fusion Microfinance Pvt Ltd) at an enterprise valuation of $4 million.