Online loan facilitator Qbera appoints Myntra’s Goldee Udani as tech chief

Qbera, an online platform that facilitates unsecured personal loans, has appointed Myntra’s Goldee Udani as its chief technology officer (CTO) and head of data science to drive technology initiatives in lending, a company statement said.

Udani will focus on building Qbera’s technology stack, spearhead new technology initiatives, and help the company to foray into the next phase of data-driven lending, the statement said. 

Before joining Qbera, Udani was associated with Flipkart Group’s fashion business Myntra as a director of data and machine learning platforms, and had also worked with global tech giants Oracle and Amazon, among others. (Flipkart is an e-commerce firm.) At Oracle, Udani was India director of research and development (R&D) and fast data.

“The penetration of credit in India falls considerably short of the prevalent demand within the country,” said Udani.

Founded in 2016 by chief executive Aditya Kumar and risk head Anubhav Jain, Qbera offers loans ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 25 lakh to salaried consumers in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. Qbera does not take the loan exposure on it is own books — it processes loans through IndusInd Bank, RBL Bank and Fullerton. 

Before founding Qbera, Kumar was the co-founder of International Baccalaureate World School. 

Owned and operated by Ant Creditex Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Qbera has disbursed personal loans worth Rs 100 crore to salaried individuals so far.

Kumar said, “By partnering with leading institutions and building data-driven processes, we have been able to minimise the overall turnaround time of personal loans to 24 hours, as compared to six to eight business days taken by the leading banks.”

Bengaluru-based startup Qbera currently caters to salaried individuals across 180 locations spanning 15,000 zip codes. The company claims to have maintained its non-performing asset (NPA) rate at below one per cent, with its current NPA rate at 0.4%.

The firm plans to hire more people. Last year, Qbera raised $3 million (Rs 21 crore) from Essel Group subsidiary E-City Ventures.

Qbera also offers loans for travel, medical purposes, education, vehicle purchase, weddings, refinancing debt and more.

In October 2017, Qbera had partnered online automobile marketplace Droom to enable loans for vehicle purchases on the latter’s platform. Personal loans for vehicle purchase account for about eight per cent of Qbera’s loan book.