Micro, small & medium enterprises (MSME) contribute almost 29% to the GDP of the country, however, access to finance for them has been limited due to lack of digital data, lack of assets, and transparency for FIs to provide access. FlexiLoans is trying to play the saviour here. It is a digital lending platform started in 2016 with an endeavour to solve the problem that SMEs face in accessing quick, flexible and adequate funds for growing their businesses using digital and alternate data points.
“FlexiLoans is one of the few MSME fintech lenders that has 100% digital origination and processing resulting in efficient and transparent customer experience,” says Manish Lunia, the company co-founder. “Our vision is to give “Loans at a click”. We are the leaders in using technology and risk models that focus on alternate/surrogate methods for scoring customers.”
Till date, this embedded finance platform has disbursed 60,000+ loans worth over Rs 2,500+ crore across 2,000+ cities without having a single branch. “We have partnerships with most large MSME ecosystems in e-commerce, foodtech, pharmtech, MSME SaaS providers for providing finance to sellers/vendors associated with these platforms,” says Lunia.
According to Lunia, technology and data science are an important aspect of their business. “Our secret sauce is our risk models which are trained over millions of records to accurately price the unsecured MSME loans in India. We have built advanced algorithms to train our risk models and keep them updated with the latest macros and micro trends.”
The technology platform at FlexiLoans is built inhouse and is designed to be the platform to enable lending for any lending ecosystem. “Our modular tech platform offers onboarding, document verification, CRM, customer communication, bureau integrations, KYC, escrow management, digital disbursement and digital collections,” says Lunia.
FlexiLoans has been PAT positive since September 2022 and has been amongst the most efficient fintech in the MSME space, claims Lunia. “We are currently operating at an annualised disbursement run rate of Rs 1,700 crore and target to triple this run rate in the next 12 months. Our credit cost has remained sub 3% in the current financial year and has been sub 5% even in Covid times.”
FlexiLoans completed its Series B at the start of 2022 of $90 million which included $30 million in equity and $60 million in debt. The round was led by Maj Invest ($12 billion+ Denmark-based fund), Fasanara Capital ($5 billion London-based fund), Caravel Group (Harry Banga Family office), Yogesh Mahansaria and also saw participation from existing shareholders including Sanjay and Falguni Nayar.
“We are scaling up the merchant BNPL and embedded finance suite that will give massive customer velocity to the business over the next 12 months. Our supply chain vertical has grown 400% over the last 18 months and is expected to double in the next 12 months, establishing us as the leader in this space”, says Lunia.
STEADY PROGRESS
Has access to 10 million+ SMEs via 100+ partners pan India
Processes 1.5 lakh applications every month
Over 10 million+ lifetime web customers with the app
53% of loans are to SMEs borrowing their first business loan ever