[Funding alert] FlexiLoans raises $90 mn in Series B funding round

SME-focused online lending platform, FlexiLoans has raised $90 million in mix of equity and debt Series B funding round.

The equity round around $28 million led by Denmark-based MAJ Invest, while some part of equity and debt round led by UK-based investment firm Fasanara Capital.

Existing investors Sanjay Nayar, Hong Kong-based Banga family, and Yogesh Mahansaria, founder of Alliance Tire Group have invested in this round.

FlexiLoans claimed that this investment is Fasanara Capital’s first SME fintech investment in India.

The company plans to use the funds on technology development and double its loan book through its cooling, now-pay-later services (BNPL) and supply chain finance platforms. It will continue to invest in technology and strengthen aspects of customer automation, risk management and analytics capabilities.

The Mumbai-based FlexiLoans was founded in 2016 by Deepak Jain, Ritesh Jain and Manish Lunia and Abhishek Kothari, It is an embedded finance platform that helps in providing financing to the vendors or sellers of these ecommerce platforms.

This company has more than 120 partners including e-commerce major companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, Myntra and others.

“We currently disburse over Rs 100 crore of loans monthly and plan to double this run rate over the next year, with our co-lending platform contributing a significant share of growth,” said, Deepak Jain, co-founder of FlexiLoans.

The startup claims that it has so far extended loans worth over Rs 1,700 crore to MSMEs, traders in over 1,600 Indian cities.

The company aims to deploy loans of Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 1,800 crore over the next 12 months and the bulk of its loan book is generated from disbursements to small businesses in tier 2 and 3 cities.

The startup is also trying to grow inorganically through acquisitions.

Commenting on about acquisitions, Deepak Jain, said,’’ We are also looking at acquisitions in areas which will help us grow. We want to continue to be a digital MSME lender and any startup that helps us grow in this segment, we will be interested in.’’

Jain also said the company currently claims to see an annual revenue run rate (ARR) of Rs 100 crore and currently has an active loan book of Rs 500 crore.

“India is a strong market for MSME financing and we are delighted to partner with FlexiLoans.com, which is amongst the pioneers in the digital MSME lending space in India and shares a similar commitment to Fasanara’s to reduce the financing gap for MSMEs,” said, Francesco Filia, chief executive officer of Fasanara Capital.

“Embedded financing to merchants in the e-commerce ecosystem is a sweet spot that we invest in across the world and FlexiLoans.com.com has a strong product-led partnership in India for the same,” he added.

In October 2020, FlexiLoans had raised 20 million in equity and debt round led by Falguni and Sanjay Nayar family office.

About FlexiLoans

FlexiLoans is an online lending platform started with an endeavour to solve the problem that SMEs face in accessing Quick, Flexible and Adequate funds for growing their Businesses. Over 80% of Loan proposals from SMEs currently are rejected by institutional channels on account of inadequate financial history or collaterals.

With the fast and ubiquitous digital adoption in India and increased avenues to leverage data analytics, they are standing on the verge of Banking transformation in this country which will help us efficiently cater to the large untapped and unserved demand. They wish to make the ‘social and alternative scoring’ of SMEs and Individuals a big opportunity for the economy that will far out place the limited insights that financial bureau provide.

They believe that their technology-powered online marketplace is the best model to meet the financial requirements of SME’s who do not have credit history and hence cannot avail loans from traditional banking channels.