IDG, Accion invest more in CreditMantri

Chennai-based online credit management startup CreditMantri Finserve Pvt. Ltd has raised Rs 51.4 crore ($7.6 million) in Series B funding from new and existing investors, it said in a statement.

Existing investors IDG Ventures India, Accion Venture Lab and Elevar Equity, and new investors Newid Capital and Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund (managed by Quona Capital), participated in the round.

Founded in 2012 by former Citibank executives R Sudarshan, Gowri Mukherjee and Ranjit Punja, CreditMantri is an online platform that helps customers make borrowing decisions. It helps them understand their credit scores, learn how to improve it, resolve past issues and reduce current borrowing costs, among other things.

Punja, who is CreditMantri's CEO, earlier oversaw collections for all international consumer-lending businesses of Citibank, across 53 countries.

COO Sudarshan has worked with Citibank for 20 years across banking operations, technology and outsourcing. Before joining CreditMantri, he was CFO at TCS eServe Ltd.

Mukherjee, who is CMO at the company, has around 17 years' experience at Citibank, Standard Chartered and HSBC.

In June 2015, the startup had raised $2.5 million (around Rs 16 crore then) in Series A funding from IDG Ventures India, Elevar Equity and Accion Venture Lab.

While Elevar Equity provides equity capital to entrepreneurs and high-growth micro-finance institutions in India, Southeast Asia and LatAm, Accion Venture Lab provides seed capital to startups in the field of financial inclusion.

VC activity in sector 

In June last year, CreditMantri's main competitor CreditVidya had secured $2 million (Rs 13.3 crore) in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital.

Apart from credit score analysis startups, online lending has also attracted a lot of investor interest in the last two years. No wonder, then, that as many as 25 startups have emerged in the space during this period, with the majority of them also getting funded, according to a Techcircle analysis.

Early this year, Gurgaon-based fin-tech startup Loan Frame Technologies Pte Ltd raised $2.25 million (Rs 15.3 crore) in seed investment led by Vedanta Capital.

Online lending platform Capital Float, operated by Bangalore-based Zen Lefin Pvt Ltd, raised Rs 17 crore ($2.5 million) from Chennai-based non-banking financial company IFMR Capital Finance.

Lending marketplace Deal4Loans in July 2015 raised $15 million from Franklin Templeton International Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.

In June 2015, SME lending firm Lendingkart raised $32 million in a Series B round led by Bertelsmann India Investments and others, and Bangalore-based KrazyBee.com, which offers loans to students with no credit history or credit cards, raised $2 million in seed funding from two Chinese firms.

Note:- The story was updated on March 1, 2017 to include names of the new investors.