Yubi Group, backed by Peak XV and Lightspeed Ventures, reported a nearly 50% year-on-year increase in revenue, reaching Rs 490 crore in FY24. In an interview with Narayanan V, Gaurav Kumar, founder and CEO of the Chennai-based fintech unicorn, shares insights into the key growth drivers, the business outlook for the current fiscal year, and plans for a potential IPO.
Can you provide an overview of the Yubi Group’s structure?
The Yubi Group operates across four key business verticals. The flagship vertical, Yubi, offers comprehensive lending infrastructure, including digital lending, co-lending, supply chain financing, and asset-backed securitisation. These services cater to banks and NBFCs, enabling them to provide a diverse range of loans — ranging from personal and two-wheeler loans to supply chain and dealer financing—all within a seamless, We process over one lakh retail loans on our platform every day.
The second vertical, Aspero, is an online bond platform designed for retail investors. It facilitates large corporates and NBFCs in raising funds through bond issuances. The third vertical, Spocto X, is a debt collection platform that digitises the entire collections process, handling about 3.5 crore retail loan collections monthly for various banks. Finally, there’s Accumn, which provides credit underwriting solutions tailored for both retail and corporate lenders.
In summary, we are a technology solutions provider for capital providers, with no lending activities from our own balance sheet.
Which segment in lending is growing the fastest?
The co-lending space is growing significantly. The co-lending market is projected to grow to Rs 1.8 lakh crore this year. We are noticing a shift from some direct assignments toward co-lending. Major NBFCs are increasingly entering co-lending as originators due to reduced funding costs through partnerships with banks. These loans undergo joint KYC checks, making the underwriting process very stringent.
Priority sector lending is also scaling up, with a growing emphasis on agriculture. Farm loans and tractor loans are gaining traction in the co-lending ecosystem. While the initial growth in co-lending was driven by home loans, machinery loans, and loans against collateral — later expanding to SME and unsecured SME loans — the agriculture sector is now emerging as a key focus area.
What is the volume throughput target for each of these verticals this year?
In co-lending, we have 114 NBFCs and housing finance companies and more than 28 banks. Last year, we did around Rs 26,000 crore in throughput on our platform, and this year, we expect around Rs 70,000– Rs 80,000 crore.
For the fixed income side, specifically retail bonds, we anticipate over Rs 24,000–Rs 25,000 crore in distribution through the platform. The supply chain is another area where we see tremendous growth potential. With industries like automotive and electronics becoming more deeply established in India, there’s a growing need for upstream vendor finance, downstream dealer finance, factoring, reverse factoring, and more. This year, we’re projecting around Rs 18,000–Rs 20,000 crore in throughput for supply chain financing.
What are your revenue growth projections?
Founded in October 2020, we are a four-year-old company that has seen remarkable growth. In our first year, we achieved revenues of around Rs 25 crore, which surged to Rs 166 crore in our first full year. This momentum continued with Rs 328 crore in the second year, culminating in Rs 490 crore last financial year.
Our goal is to sustain a 40–50% year-on-year revenue growth over the next two to three years, driven by four key pillars: lending technology, fixed income solutions, collection technology, and risk management technology.
What about your IPO plans?
We are still in the early stages of growth, with most of our investors having been with us for only 18–24 months. These are long-term investors, and we anticipate being IPO-ready in about 24 months. Recently, I invested $30 million in equity capital to increase my ownership to 14.5%, with a goal of reaching 20% before going public. When the IPO takes place, my preference is to anchor the offering myself and, if feasible, avoid locking in any investors. Our strategy is to pursue an IPO based on strong business metrics rather than attempting to time the market.