Fintech Startups – Dutch Uncles

Small Ticket Loans : New Avenues for Fintech in Small Cities

Shalmoli Sarkar — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 08:35:13 +0000

The pandemic has altered the consumer lending behaviour which has shrunk the ticket size of loans with most loan requests coming from blue and grey collar workers and millennials. According to the joint report by credit bureau TransUnion Cibil and Google the disbursal of small ticket loans has been 70 percent with most borrowers belonging to tier-II cities and smaller towns, and a majority of millennials requesting retail loans. Since September the demand for small ticket loans from blue and grey collar workers and gig workers rose by 25-30 percent and the average ticket size loans have dropped by 10-15 percent, capping the maximum ticket loan upto Rs 25000. The tightening of unsecured credit policies is the reason behind the inclination for small-ticket loans. The lending space in India is devoid of formal sources of credit for the lower-income groups, but with new financing option like BNPL people from remote regions are now availing small-ticket loans which are good news for the fintech players.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL): Preferred short term financing option

The buy now pay later ( BNPL) – a short-term financing option for small ticket loans has gained popularity in the pandemic. The user base for BNPL financing option is expected to become 80-100 million by 2026 surpassing the user base for the credit cards is projected to become 75 million, according to a report by BCG. The BNPL market is poised to be worth $45-50 billion by 2026, according to consultancy firm RedSeer.

This short financing option is gaining ground among borrowers since it offers short-term loans without a credit history, and to individuals that belong to lower-income and self-employed individuals. Unlike credit cards, BNPL does not have charges such as joining fees and annual fees. In addition to this BNPL loans have an average transaction size of around 300-600 with zero interest charges.

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According to the joint report by credit bureau TransUnion Cibil and Google the disbursal of small ticket loans has been 70 percent with most borrowers belonging to tier-II cities and smaller towns.

Small ticket loans are speaking opportunities for fintech players in smaller cities

Conventionally the loans offered by banks were for three purposes i.e.personal loans, home loans, and salary overdrafts. The pandemic has tightened people’s purses on discretionary spending due to job losses and paycuts, in which the fintech players are sensing this to be an opportunity to offer credit via BNPL for purchases in online grocery, e-commerce and food delivery. Fintech players like EarlySalary,Dvara Money, NIRA and Bueno Finance are growing steadily in this space with new customer acquisitions monthly with a growth rate of 25-30 percent. Other fintech players offering BNPL such as Simpl, Lazy,PostPe are acquiring customers aged 18-25 years who are novices to the banking system and at the early stage of their credit journey.

The small ticket loans space holds ample opportunities for the fintech players as advancement in technology and digital access is helping the players locate, reach and engage with new customers from smaller cities and towns. As per the joint report of TransUnion Cibil and Google, 77 percent of all retail loan enquiries were from tier-II cities and beyond. In addition to this online searches for loans from non-tier-I cities went up by two-and-a-half times between 2017 and 2020.

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RBI’s New Fintech Department and Regulations- A Good News for the Indian Fintech?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 08:57:34 +0000

Demonetisation and contactless payments as a preventive measure in the pandemic has been a fillip to the fintech sector in India especially in digital payments and loans. As of June 2021, India has been home to 16 fintech unicorns, which speaks of its massive growth. The Indian market has also been a breeding ground for investors willing to invest in NFTs and cryptocurrency which is yet unregulated and holds much of a debate regarding it being a safe investment option.

According to a joint report by BCG and FICCI, India’s fintech industry is expected to reach $150-$160 billion by 2025. As the fintech landscape evolves and more players enter to serve various demographics, there is a need for the sector to be regulated especially those offering liquidity services which is the exclusive domain of banks.

RBI’s new fintech department to push innovation

The RBI has set up a separate internal department for fintech on 4th January 2022. This department aims to promote innovation and also identify the challenges and opportunities associated with fintech companies and address them promptly.

All matters related to the facilitation of constructive innovations and incubations in the fintech which might affect the financial sector/ markets and fall under the purview of the bank will be dealt by the internal fintech department including matters of inter-regulatory coordination and internal coordination.

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According to a joint report by BCG and FICCI, India’s fintech industry is expected to reach $150-$160 billion by 2025.

Widening the gates of credit data access for fintech

The RBI has already taken the first step to promote innovation in the Indian fintech companies by allowing them to directly access data from credit information bureau. Earlier access to data from credit information bureau was a privilege that could be enjoyed by specified users and regulated entities like telecom companies, insurance providers, rating agencies, and registered brokers. For assessing the credit profiles of customers, the fintech companies earlier used alternative data from social media footprints and from the bills of telephone and electricity to judge creditworthiness making the process cumbersome. This direct credit data access to millions of Indians will benefit the firms in the below way:

Take better credit decisions.
Several banks collaborate with fintech firms for the disbursal of loans digitally, therefore access to data will help banks make informed decisions while underwriting the credit.
Access to credit data will help these firms to develop tailor-made products for customers that require less documentation and lower interest rates.

New criteria is a challenge

RBI’s decision of widening the doors for data access might benefit a few fintech companies. Only those firms will be eligible to have access to data that are Indian-owned with diversified ownership. It is a major hurdle since the majority of the fintech firms in India are foreign VC/ PE funded and may not match the ownership criteria. The other criteria involves only those fintech firms to be eligible to process information to support regulated lending entities such as banks and financial institutions, whose net worth is Rs 2 crore. The reason to favour Indian-owned companies is to follow local data governance and compliance.

Cybersecurity is mandatory

With increasing data leaks, platform downtimes, and information theft, RBI has mandated the firms to have a certification from CISA ( Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and to have robust data protection in place, since data is the backbone for this industry. It is necessary to develop a strong mechanism to protect data and invest more in such mechanisms to evade cyberattacks in the future and cement people’s beliefs in financial technology processes.

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Digital Gold : Investing in Gold Just Became Easier

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 08:28:07 +0000

During Diwali and wedding season, it is an annual ritual for Indians to make a beeline to jewellery shops to purchase gold jewellery, coins, and bars. Gold, a precious yellow metal whose importance in Indian households is beyond intricate jewellery and is a prudent investment that acts as a safety net against inflation, diversifies a portfolio, and is subjected to lesser risks as compared to stocks.

But, despite it being the most preferred investment acquiring and owning physical gold has its downsides. The challenge lies in identifying the metal’s purity and safekeeping and storage. Realising this to be an opportunity, the fintech in India has launched digital gold that frees individuals from the hassle of inspecting the purity of gold and offers safe storage using cutting-edge technologies.

Fintech tapping into digital gold to attract millennials

If digitisation in the financial sector has made disruptions in lending loans, insurance, stock market broking, credit card payments, investment in stocks, cryptos, and now NFTs then why investing in gold digitally should be left out?

Digital gold is fintech’s newest offering that allows individuals to purchase and invest in gold virtually without requiring to physically hold the gold. One can easily buy it online with the minimum buy or sell value of one rupee only. With most millennials now existing in the workforce, who are early adopters of disruptive technologies, they will likely be most interested in digital gold investments that take place within a click without requiring to worry about inspecting the gold physically. . The fintech players are offering a digital gold guarantee to the purity of gold purchased and store it into secure vaults for free of cost for five years and provide full insurance for the customer. The customer is liable to pay a storage fee to the custodian if they do not sell or redeem their holding.

Currently, three companies offer digital gold in India, Augmont Gold, MMTC-PAMP, and SafeGold. Digital payment platforms such as Paytm, Gpay, PhonePe, Groww, and now Airtel Payments Bank in partnership with SafeGold are offering digital gold as an investment option on their platform. Small banks like Shivalik Small Finance Bank are ramping up to provide customers loan products against digital gold in partnership with fintech firm Indiagold.

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Investing in gold digitally can begin with an amount as small as Re 1.

What are the benefits of investing in digital gold?

One can start investing in gold digitally with Re 1.
It can be used as collateral for online loans.
The gold is genuine and the purity is 24k
Its storage is safe and is 100 percent insured.
At anytime it can be converted into coins, bars, and jewellery and will be delivered to the doorstep.

Its disadvantages include :

Rs 2,00,000 limit investment .
There is no lack of regulating body like RBI or SEBI
Companies charge for extending the storage period.

What is in it for the fintech platforms offering digital gold as an investment?

Investment in gold became an attractive investment due to its resilient nature to market fluctuations. Millennials were found investing in gold more than ever before. With immense trust in technology and apps, millennials will likely invest through these fintech platforms in digital gold. These fintech platforms will have an upper hand over traditional suppliers and will lower the entry barrier since they are making quantities of gold available digitally and will not require a huge amount to buy gold. But, there might be a probability to switch to gold ETFs and gold sovereign bonds since gold can be held for the long term as compared to digital gold.

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Tokenisation Rule:Its Impact on the E-Commerce Businesses and the Online Shoppers

Shalmoli Sarkar — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 08:30:03 +0000

In a bid to enhance the security of transaction card data, RBI is emphasising tokenisation and has asked all businesses and payment gateways to remove sensitive customer data and card information on their websites and systems to bolster data security and use encrypted tokens to carry transactions. RBI has ordered all companies to comply with this rule strictly from 1st January 2022.

Why the emphasis on tokenisation?

Several businesses in India save their card payment transaction details in the system. In addition to storing card information, many e-commerce and D2C companies force their customer to store card details, making them susceptible to cyberattacks resulting in the theft of card information. Stolen card data of users is highly valuable in the darknet marketplace that is further used to carry out illegal bank transactions without the individual’s knowledge.

What is tokenisation?

Tokenisation provides its users an added layer of security by replacing the card details with a unique code or token which is a string of randomly generated numbers by an algorithm. Thus, allowing online purchases to go through without compromising on the card details. The tokens generated by the algorithm are unique for every debit or credit card and merchant platform where the card is used.

These token numbers even if cracked will not leave out any meaningful information to the cyberattackers.
In conventional online card payments, a successful transaction takes place based on information like the 16-digit card number, the card expiry date, the CVV as well as the one-time password or transaction PIN.

On the other hand in tokenisation, each number is unique for each combination of cards, devices, and token requestor. For a transaction to happen, the merchant or any shop owner initiates a tokenisation request to the card network that creates a proxy token to the card number and sends it back to the merchant. For initiating a transaction to a different merchant or from a different card, tokenisation is to be done again.

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Tokenisation provides its users an added layer of security by replacing the card details with a unique code or token which is a string of randomly generated numbers by an algorithm.

How are different fintech platforms reacting to tokenisation?

Razorpay has launched ‘Razorpay TokenHQ’ a multi-network Card-on-File (CoF) Tokenisation solution accessible to all businesses. Merchants using different payment gateways can tokenise cards using Razorpay’s tokenisation solution and route payments using their existing payment partnerships. Using Razorpay TokenHQ businesses will be able to create, process, delete and modify tokens for online card payment with customer’s consent at zero cost and effort.

Much to the likes of Razorpay, Walmart-backed digital payment firm PhonePe has launched PhonePe SafeCard- a tokenisation solution where merchant partners can create, process, delete and modify tokens for online card payments with customers’ consent on their platforms via a simple Application programming interface (API) integration. This saves time and effort also eliminates the need to integrate with multiple card networks.

PayU also announced its unique tokenisation solution ‘PayU Token Hub which will enable businesses to comply with RBIs latest guidelines for online card data storage also allowing issuing banks to generate their tokens.

How will it impact the existing online e-commerce and online businesses?

This new move from RBI is a progressive step towards safeguarding the vital card information and will benefit businesses with a smooth customer payment experience as repeat customers can simply use their CoF or access one-click checkout directly without going through the hassle of entering payment details again. However, the deadline given for businesses for transitioning to tokenisation is abrupt that will subsequently impact small and medium payment operators to go out of business which is already reeling under RBI’s new rule of recurring payments where transactions will be carried out only after the customer gives a green signal, in turn, affecting the continuity of business.
This sudden move will immensely impact around 5 million customers who frequently shop online by storing their card details and might result in customers switching to UPI-based payments or cash-on-delivery payment mode.

For e-commerce and D2C companies, tokenisation can impact cashback and equated monthly installments (EMIs) that customers pay through stored cards for purchases and buy-now-pay-later options. This would mean pushing customers for a UPI payment for products of smaller ticket sizes.

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Tcyhon: Offering Instant Access to Various Fintech Products Within a Click

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 14:42:32 +0000

The word ‘ instant or getting things instantly done within the comfort of a click in the past few years has bowled over people. Latching on to the characteristic to provide something instant and fast soon became the USP of many startups across business verticals that have challenged the archaic business processes of the biggies and have made consumers spoilt for choices. The processes have become instant be it purchasing food and medicines online to procuring raw materials say, for an auto spare parts business.
Apart from the growth of online shopping, India’s fintech ecosystem has grown enormously in the past five years. According to a joint report from FICCI and BCG, 67 percent of the more than 2100 FinTechs in India today were founded in the last five years.
With a myriad of fintech startups on the plate, users become overwhelmed with the abundance of information available on the internet while selecting the appropriate fintech product sufficing their needs.
Precisely, the ecosystem lacks a consolidated platform for accessing all the information about fintech applications on a single screen with benefits listed for the users. Realising a gap here, Harsh Sharma’s Delhi-based startup Tchyon is now looking to change this.

Tchyon : Aiming to offer financial services faster than the speed of light

Inspired by the nature of the hypothetical particle that always travels faster than the light, Harsh Sharma – an MBA graduate from the University of Rochester named his financial discovery platform- Tchyon. Standing true to its name, this venture aims to offer its users give access to the best financial services on its platform at a lightning speed.

While working as a credit analyst in Joust in the United States, Harsh handled the crucial function of writing underwriting models for businesses. While working there he realised the long trail of paperwork and documents that made it cumbersome for businesses and individuals to seek credit cards or open a bank account. Such archaic processes in the digital era are a major disappointment for the users to gain confidence with the financial product.

The drive to start his venture came into fruition during the pandemic when he moved to India and found himself in the middle of digitalising his father’s business.

In the process of digitalising the business, he witnessed that opening a bank account and setting up payment gateways would require to fill documents such as MoA ( Memorandum of Association), AoA ( Articles of Association), etc which seemed a daunting task. Harsh wanted to address this problem and thought that instant access to financial services digitally should be as easy as ordering food online just within the click of a button.

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According to a joint report from FICCI and BCG, 67 percent of the more than 2100 Fintechs in India today were founded in the last five years.

Recommending the best fintech applications to the user

In general, if we ask anyone about the last fintech application on their phone, it is likely that it must have been referred by a friend, social media platforms, relatives, or other acquaintances. Tchyon here wants to replicate the offline recommendation of fintech applications online and guide a user to help them understand and suggest the best financial product that matches their use cases. With the pros and cons of all financial products displayed on the platform, it creates transparency, aiding the user to make an informed decision.
The beauty of this platform lies in tailoring the onboarding process where the user will undergo a single KYC process to understand a user’s needs.
Let us say, for instance, the user wants to avail services of insurance and credit card only, Tchyon then suggests certain fintech platforms and services that allow the users to avail the services with a simple email id or mobile number through the platform.
It provides a plug-and-play model, where the user will undergo a quick verification process and can instantly set up a digital wallet or begin investing instantly in crypto trading platforms such as Coin DCX or online trading platforms like-5Paisa, Zerodha, etc.
Under one roof the platform has merchant partners for several needs of users such as crypto, neobank, cards, bonds, alternate investment, P2P lending, mutual funds, personal finance, stocks.

How the small businesses will benefit?

The digitisation of various functions in businesses especially finance has been brought to the forefront by the pandemic. Indian MSMEs are riddled with several challenges related to cash flows, setting payment gateways, payroll, and logistics but are not aware of solutions that can minimise these frictions in business operations. The business owners being alien to technology become overwhelmed with the information available with the simple google search.

Tchyon helps to diagnose the problems by asking a certain set of questions regarding the challenges faced in their routine business operations and suggesting the best products.

Collection- A curated collection of financial products

The purpose of the collection feature is to enable people instantly. Looking at the concerns mentioned by a business or any individual the platform’s ‘Collection’ feature will curate a basket of appropriate financial products and services that will effectively address their problems. Once convinced with the solutions provided the businesses decide to go ahead with a simple onboarding process of ‘ Click here ’, upload the necessary documents verified by Tchyon, and sent to the fintech merchant company that Tchyon has partnered with.

Let us say a logistics business is facing challenges with the digitisation of payments, the collection feature will develop a basket of payment gateway services such as-Razorpay or Paytm mentioning the necessary documentation required for easy onboarding process and usage.

Through the platform’s Onboarding-as-a-Service API users are instantly able to signup for the services, thereby helping merchant partners to convert prospects quickly to users and save sufficient time.

With the conventional approach, if to open a payment gateway, the users need to fill and submit bulky documents such as AoA and MoA which is cumbersome.

Upon sending the documents the businesses can begin improving the operations from the next day.

The revenue model

Tchyon does not charge from its users but charges a certain amount from its merchants. Moreover, the platform being a marketplace also earns revenues from advertising.

The road ahead for Tchyon

For the next couple of years, Harsh aims to create a myriad of financial offerings for its consumer by partnering with more fintech merchants. Next, it wants to help businesses to identify their problems to offer quick solutions to provide instant gratification. Third, it has plans to launch virtual accounts that could be used for investing in the stock market, cryptos, or any other asset class. Fourth, it plans to provide credit for both consumers and businesses.

Lastly, talking about India’s fintech landscape, Harsh is quite bullish about the sector picking up growth since India is a populous country with varied interests and unique demands, and to cater to them several fintech platforms are launching propositions that can benefit consumers in a great manner, just all it requires is a consolidated platform that helps them make an informed decision regarding the fintech platform suiting their needs and free Indians from the archaic documentation processes and ease the fintech adoption.

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Stuck with Loan Rejections? Now Borrow Loans Digitally through Credit Fair

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 09:31:09 +0000

Yesteryear director Bimal Roy’s masterpiece ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ highlighted the pain and struggle of Shambhu to seek loans from traditional lenders that too without collateral, after Harnam Singh deceitfully mounts a large pile of debt on him. If Shambhu fails to pay off the debt, his land will be seized which seems to be his sole livelihood and asset.

The film has aged 68, but what Shambhu faced is yet unsolved over the years i.e. lack of access to formal credit for lower-income groups. There are approximately 550 million Indians that are underserved with access to formal sources of credit.

There are three challenges faced by the residents of tier-II and tier-III while seeking loans from formal sources :

Lack of prime credit score.
Credit is available at the point of sale via credit card but penetration and usage are low.
High costs are charged by the traditional banks for processes such as onboarding, management, and recovery.

But, Aditya Damani, exactly knew what was lacking in the lending space to help the underserved Indians get loans through formal sources of credit by offering 0% or low cost, short term, unsecured installment loans at the point of sale.

Credit Fair-The inception

Founded in 2018, CreditFair is the brainchild of Aditya Damani whose previous experience of mobile, B2B sales, and Institutional-lending experience has helped him run and grow this venture successfully.

His prior work experience of working with Oakam – a digital micro-lending company based out of London that provides long-term solutions to people who are excluded from the mainstream financial life in London, motivated him to think if the same can be emulated in India. Aditya witnessed the transition of India’s fintech ecosystem from informal to formal and wanted to financially include the ones that are underserved mainly from the tier-II and tier-III cities.

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There are approximately 550 million Indians that are underserved with access to formal sources of credit.

Lending loans digitally to the ‘Bharat’

What makes Credit Fair differ from other digital lending platforms is its partnering with specific merchants and dealers to offer 0% EMI and subsidising the interest cost.

Earlier merchant partners grappled to provide point of sale financing options to their customers due to the inability to pay their high subvention rates, lower approval rates, and the time to loan disbursal can be as long as five days, which resulted in the low number of customers.

Digital lending platform Credit Fair acts as a bridge between the customer seeking loans and the merchant companies willing to give loans.

With the merchant companies it forms a symbiotic relationship giving the below advantages:

Offering no-cost EMIs and growing revenues upto 45 percent.
Get quick notifications using Credit Fair’s app.
Get a higher approval rate with a CIBIL score as low as 600
Faster loan disbursements

To name a few Careerpoint Kota, Indira IVF, Miles Education, Saviesa , Sleek Kitchen from Asian Paints are some of the merchant companies that lend loans through Credit Fair.

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Credit Fair is a microlending fintech platform that lends loans at low cost or 0% EMI to the Indians from small towns and cities.

Sectors in which loans are offered

Credit Fair offers loans to their customer seeking loans in health, education, home decor, and electric vehicles. The need for loans in these sectors has emerged in the pandemic due to online education paving the purchase of laptops and tablets, medical emergencies due to Covid-19, home renovation, and electric vehicles which is to be the government’s focus for reducing pollution. These are high growth sectors and people consuming these consists of the target segment. Moreover, the combined annual spend on these sectors amounts to $20 billion and it gets the first-mover advantage since few lenders offer loans specifically in these sectors expanding the ambit of financial inclusion. The loan amount ranges from USD150-25,000 and tenure from 3 months to 3 years.

Is the borrower genuine?

Since, the loans offered to the borrowers are unsecured, monitoring the end-use of funds lent and giving money for specific use cases, and knowing where the money is going is crucial for Credit Fair’s business model. To minimise the risk of defaults, it has built a machine learning model to estimate the credit limit of borrowers.

In addition to this, it has stringent processes to assess both financial and behavioural parameters to develop a credit profile of a borrower. Among, financial parameters, it analyses an applicant’s banks statement and credit history to understand the capability for repayment of the loan. In behavioural parameters, it leverages the apps used, transactional SMS, and scans the social media behaviour to understand a borrower’s willingness to pay. Identity and fraud checks are also conducted at various points to establish the authenticity of the candidate.

Gamification for collection of loan repayment

Credit Fair has an in-house digital collection facility that realises loan repayments through e-mandates. Currently, 60-70 percent of its customer base uses e-mandates for loan repayment. And 8-10 percent would miss on repayments. Credit Fair uses gamification to induce the right behaviour among their borrowers to ensure and make them understand their consisting defaults will impact the credit score that might prevent them from seeking bigger and better loans in the future. For intentional loan defaulters, Credit Fair engages with its customers to restructure the loan payment period.

It uses an auto-decisioning rule engine to improve the efficiency of operations and reduce turnaround time.

Credit Fair’s Money matters

Recently in November 2021, Credit Fair has raised undisclosed funds from Northern Arc to build its capabilities to expand its ambit of financial inclusion to the underserved Indians belonging to remote towns and villages. With the fresh injection of funds, they want to expand their credit products via their mobile app to offer digital financial services to small businesses and middle and lower-income groups. Besides, the fundraise Credit Fair will benefit from Northern Arc by leveraging its expertise of advising hundreds of leading companies in financial services to optimise their debt-raising strategy in expanding products and services across all market categories and become the market leader. Till date, more than $7 million loans have been disbursed, and more than 30,000 customers have availed of their digitalised and automated service.

In the future, it plans to raise $5 million to reach a $15 million monthly disbursement rate and $75 million assets under management in 2 years.

The road ahead for lending loans

By 2025, Credit Fair aspires to witness atleast 1 million Indians having access to the right amount of credit at the right cost and time. They want to penetrate deeper into the masses to offer no-cost EMIs and offer better loan terms and personal loans than what banks and large NBFCs offer. Moreover, they want to foray offering loans to sectors that cater to the individuals of the age bracket of 25-40 years. They want to build a credit ladder for those individuals with no credit history.

It wants to build a P2P lending platform to lower the cost of funding and keep the cost minimum for customers.

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RupeeRedee, Making Lending Safe, Quick And Hassle-Free For India’s 1.3 Billion

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 05:35:09 +0000

The demand for personal loans has grown over the years for low-income families and borrowers, for consumption purposes. But sadly, this space in India is highly underserved. The chances of availing monetary assistance for the underserved have become thinner, as, amid unemployment, business shutdowns, and paycuts, banks and NBFCs have tightened their purses. The traditional lenders are wary of lending to people who are new to credit or have a limited credit history.

In such grim times, digital lending startups have bridged the gap of lending by offering loans to the underserved sector.

According to Statista, digital lending is one of the fastest-growing fintech segments in India that grew from $9 billion in 2012 to nearly $110 billion in 2019. The digital lending market will reach a value of around $350 billion by 2023. The fintech startups and non-banking financial companies (NBFC) to be the main drivers of the digital lending sector.

The new-age digital platforms differ from a traditional bank’s archaic process of sanctioning loans by providing a simple and intuitive onboarding procedure and faster loan disbursals.

One such digital lending platform that caters to India’s underserved market is RupeeRedee. Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), RupeeRedee makes digital lending safe, quick, paperless, and hassle-free.

What is RupeeRedee?

Founded in September 2018, RupeeRedee is a new-age B2C financial services platform that leverages technology to make lending quick and easy. Its AWS-powered platform facilitates instant small ticket and short-term personal loans within a 10-minute turnaround through the website and mobile app for salaried and self-employed individuals addressing their daily and instant needs. To date, it has enabled 1.5 lakh credit transactions.

RupeeRedee has a captive NBFC with FincFriends Private to be the first 100% digital NBFC registered with RBI.

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According to Statista, digital lending is one of the fastest-growing fintech segments in India that grew from $9 billion in 2012 to nearly $110 billion in 2019.

How does RupeeRedee facilitate quick digital lending to 1.3 Billion Indians?

Out of the 800 million debit cardholders, a fraction of them are credit cardholders. Though the majority of them have a steady income, they do not have access to formal credit sources forcing them to rely on informal credit sources. By offering small-ticket loans RupeeRedee is bridging a gap in the market and also building a credit history to enhance an individual’s creditworthiness.

RupeeRedee processes loan requests 24×7. This is a blessing for the underserved ones as sometimes they might need instant loans due to an emergency. Also, looking at the current human health crisis, people would require money to fulfill medical expenses.

Many MSMEs can benefit from this instant sanction of loans or cash which they might use for business transactions to be done beyond office hours.

Borrowers if due to some reason are not able to pay the loan, RupeeRedee has an extension facility wherein one can extend the repayment date by a minimum of 5 days by paying an extension fee.

What products does RupeeRedee offer?

RupeeRedee operates with multiple NBFCs in the background to facilitate short-term personal loans coupled with PhyGital, POS (Point-of-Sale), LaaS ( Lending-as-a-Service), and brokerage services.

How to apply for a loan in RupeeRedee?

RupeeRedee has simplified the loan process by keeping minimum formalities. Here are the documents required:

Aadhaar, Driving Licence, Voter Id
Latest Photograph
PAN Card
Bank Statement/ Access to bank account details

The tech stack of RupeeRedee

RupeeRedee has several backend systems such as loan origination system, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), loan management system, and collection system. They use Linux, Windows, and other relational database systems like MySQL, MS-SQL. The lending platform works with more than 40 cloud servers with a combination of production, pre-production, and development servers.

What lies ahead of the digital lending platforms in India?

The digital lending sector needs to align itself to changing consumer preferences and mould its products to suit the consumers’ requirements. The digital lending space will have ample business opportunities for lending the MSMEs that have been cash-strapped in the pandemic.

With a deluge of affordable smartphones and falling data prices penetrating rural areas, the digital lending sector is expanding the gambit of financial inclusion to tech-savvy youngsters, low-income families for instant short-term credit availability. Digital lending platforms need to offer convenience by creating minimum formalities and a hassle-free loan approval process.

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