Online lending platform ZipLoan secures Series B capital

Online lending platform ZipLoan has raised Rs 90 crore ($12.5 million) in a Series B round led by venture capital and growth-equity investment firm SAIF Partners.

ZipLoan, operated by Delhi-based Blue Jay Finlease Ltd, said in a statement that existing investors Matrix Partners India, Waterbridge Ventures and Whiteboard Capital also took part in this funding round.

The announcement came less than a month after VCCircle reported that SAIF Partners, which is investing out of its sixth fund, had pumped more than Rs 60 crore into Ziploan.

Ziploan said the new round of funding takes the total equity and debt funding it has raised so far to Rs 320 crore. It and plans to mobilise Rs 250 crore more from debt investors, it added.

Kshitij Puri, co-founder and CEO at Ziploan, said that the company aims to support small and medium-sized businesses and that it has disbursed Rs 150 crore to borrowers so far.

Launched in September 2015 by Puri and Shalabh Singhal, ZipLoan is a technology-enabled lending platform that provides loans to MSMEs. The startup offers loans of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh for a period of six to 24 months.

Ziploan has co-lending and debt partnerships with banks and non-banking financial companies such as IDFC First Bank, IndusInd Bank, Northern Arc, MAS Finance and Caspian Finance. It is operational in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Indore, Lucknow, Dehradun and Jaipur.

The startup uses an automated credit engine or risk assessment tool called ZipScore to assess the creditworthiness of prospective customers. It also has developed a proprietary loan lifecycle management product which, according to the company, helps it reduce operating costs and bring down the turnaround time to four days from application to disbursal.

Ziploan had last raised Rs 20 crore in a funding round led by Matrix Partners India in October 2017.

Prior to this, ZipLoan had raised around Rs 4.2 crore in its pre-Series A funding round led by WaterBridge Ventures.

The fintech sector in India has gained a lot of traction in recent years with many players emerging in payments, lending, insurance and personal finance segments.

Large fintech deals struck last year include the $238 million funding round secured by PolicyBazaar, $87 million by LendingKart, $54 million by ClearTax, $45 million each by Digit Infoworks Services Pvt Ltd and InstaReM, and $30 million by INDwealth.