Online P2P lending platform Faircent strengthens top deck

Gurgaon-based Fairassets Technologies India Pvt. Ltd that runs peer-to-peer (P2P) lending marketplace Faircent.com has appointed Shivam Gupta as chief risk officer and Karun Thareja as head of marketing, it said in a statement.

"We are confident that Karun and Shivam will be instrumental in driving growth and help us reach new milestones," said Vinay Mathews, co-founder and COO of Faircent.

An alumnus of IIM Lucknow, Gupta has 12 years of experience in risk management across the Southeast Asia region. Earlier, Gupta had a nine-year stint at Standard Chartered serving at various capacities and quit as its regional head of business banking for ASEAN markets. In his new role, he will be responsible for risk and risk analytics, operations and collection.

An alumnus of Faculty of Management Studies, Thareja has more than 20 years of experience in marketing, sales and business management. Earlier, he served companies including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Dassault Systemes and NIIT. Thareja will be responsible for leading growth initiatives at Faircent.

Founded in 2013 by Mathews, Rajat Gandhi and Nitin Gupta, Faircent connects borrowers and lenders and help them legalise the transaction by signing a contract. The company does this through its proprietary technology that enables credit appraisal and borrower rating.

The firm recently formed an alliance with TransUnion that provides credit information. It also tied up with Yodlee which offers an account aggregation service that allows users to see credit card, bank and investment accounts on a single screen.

In May this year, financial services firm JM Financial Ltd, through its subsidiary JM Financial Products Ltd, picked a 9.84% stake in Faircent.

In October 2015, Faircent raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Aarin Capital Partners, which is run by former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai and Manipal Group's Ranjan Pai (not related to each other).

In January 2015, Faircent secured an undisclosed amount in funding from Devesh Sachdev and Ashish Tiwari, promoters of Fusion Microfinance Pvt. Ltd.

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