Lending

Chile Based SMB Digital Bank Xepelin Raises $30M in Series A Funding Led By Kaszek

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Las Condes based fintech Xepelin has raised $30 million in Series A funding round led by Kaszek, the LatAm VC. The round also witnessed participation from MSA Capital, Amarena, Cathay Innovation, Gilgamesh Ventures and Picus Capital, along with existing investors FJ Labs and Kayyak Ventures, and a few angel investors. Xepelin has also availed credit facilities of $200 million from a host of Chilean, LatAm and US funds, bringing the total amount of funds raised by the startup to ~$233 million since inception.

Founded in 2019 by Nicolás De Camino and Sebastián Kreis, Chilean fintech Xepelin provides a range of financial services to SMBs including short-term and long-term loans, capital credits and accounts payable financing through its online platform.

London BNPL Zilch Completes Series B Funding Round

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Zilch, a London based buy now, pay later fintech startup, secured a follow-on investment of $110 million comprising debt and equity funding as part of an extended Series B round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and DMG Ventures, bringing the total amounts of funds raised by the fintech to over $230 million. The round also witnessed participation from Gauss Ventures and M&F Fund.

Founded in 2018 by Philip Belamant, Zilch is a buy now, pay later app that allows its customers to shop wherever Mastercard is accepted.

Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures Makes Its First Indian Investment In LendingTech Startup Velocity

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Velocity, a Bengaluru based fintech start-up, has secured $10.3 million in seed funding led by Valar Ventures, a US-based VC firm backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. This is Valar Venture’s first investment in an Indian start up.

Velocity, founded in 2020 by Abhiroop Medhekar, Atul Khichariya and Saurav Swaroop, provides revenue-based financing of upto $280,000 with zero equity dilution or personal guarantees. Revenue-based financing is a new alternative to venture capital or bank debt, wherein repayments happen as a fixed percentage of future revenues. According to the company, the funds will be utilised for ramping up its customer base, as well as building on its products.

Indian LendingTech KreditBee Closes Series C Round

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KreditBee, an Indian digital lending platform, has raised $70 million in a Series C follow-on round, led by TPG-backed NewQuest Capital Partners and Motilal Oswal Private Equity, bringing the total Series C round funding to $145 million. Other Series C investors include Mirae Asset Ventures, Alpine Capital, Indian business tycoon Azim Premji’s PremjiInvest, and Arkam Ventures.

Founded in 2018 by Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy, Madhusudan Ekambaram and Wan Hong, Bengaluru based KreditBee is a digital lending platform developed to assist young professionals with their personal finances.

Student Loans Focused Fintech Leap Finance Raises $17M in Series B Funding Led By Jungle Ventures

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Leap Finance, a lendingtech platform focused on Indian students studying overseas, announced that it has raised $17 million in a Series B funding round led by Jungle Ventures, along with participation from Owl Ventures and existing investor Sequoia Capital India, bringing the total amount of funding to $22.5 million.

San Francisco headquartered Leap Finance offers education loans and credit cards to Indian students studying overseas. Leap was founded in 2019 by Arnav Kumar and Vaibhav Singh.

India Based Fintech Svasti Microfinance Raises $4.3M

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Svasti Microfinance announced that it has secured $4.3 million in a new round of funding from a group of investors including Nordic Microfinance Initiative, Adar Poonawalla and Rajiv Dadlani Group, bringing the total funds raised to approximately $20 million.

Svasti provides micro-loans to urban slum dwellers and women microentrepreneurs. The company was founded in 2010 by Narayanan Subramaniam and Arunkumar Padmanabhan. Svastech, its fintech platform, employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to manage risks and provide insights to its customer base. The current round of funding will enable the company to expand operations to new geographies and strengthen its emplpyee base.

Allianz X Leads Series C Funding in Hong Kong Fintech WeLab

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WeLab, the Hong Kong based fintech startup, has finalized its Series C-1 $75 million funding round, which was led by Allianz X.

Allianz X is the digital investment division of Germany’s Allianz Group, one of the world’s largest insurance service providers and fund managers. Since launching operations in 2013, WeLab has secured over $600 million of strategic financing from well-known investors.

Allianz X’s investment will be instrumental in financing WeLab’s further expansion and enabling the ongoing development of its technological platform. Also marking the start of a deeper strategic cooperation between Allianz and WeLab. Through this partnership, both companies plan to jointly develop digital products and solutions for wealth management, among other things.

This joint effort will begin in Hong Kong with a further expansion plan to the rest of the Greater Bay Area with its 72 million total inhabitants, potentially also to Indonesia and the Southeast Asian markets at a later stage.

Since its founding in 2013, WeLab has grown to be one of the big digital financial service providers in Asia. Its services include digital banking services and loans for private customers, a digital lending platform to connect lenders and borrowers, as well as several technology-driven services to support financial institutions in their lending processes.

Petal Takes In $126.6M Debt Facility To Provide Access To Credit

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Fintech and credit card company Petal closed on more than $126.6 million in debt facility backed by Silicon Valley Bank and Trinity Capital that will enable it to expand its credit card programs.

Founded in 2016, New York-based Petal aims to make financial services more accessible, allowing people to build credit and spend responsibly. The company uses machine learning to expand credit access, particularly to those who are new to credit and overlooked by big banks.

The startup is growing quickly, and accelerated during the global pandemic as big banks were pulling back, Petal’s Jason Gross, co-founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News.

“We recently reached a milestone of 100,000 approved cardholders,” he added. “Ths funding allows us to continue that growth, but more significantly, this is the first depository financial institution for Petal cards. We are not just providing a typical credit card, but pioneering a whole new way of looking at credit risk.”

Petal offers two Visa card products: one for consumers who already have a credit history and want to improve their credit, and one to help people to build credit with a no-fee credit card that provides cash back and higher limits.

Approximately 70 percent of Petal’s card users had little to no credit history, Gross said, adding that cardholders with no credit history were able to raise their credit scores to an average of 678 after two months.

The new facility includes $100 million from Silicon Valley Bank and $26.6 million from Trinity Capital. The funding will enable Petal to focus on providing better alternatives to big credit card companies and to expand its user base to millions, Gross said.

“Having a bank endorse our approach is something we have worked at for years,” he added. “We have been able to prove, over the last few years, that using cash flow instead of credit scores is better at predicting creditworthiness.”

The funding complements Petal’s existing $300 million facility led by Jeffries in 2019. In total, the company closed on more than $440 million in debt and raised more than $100 million equity financing, according to Gross. This includes a $55 million Series C round of funding in 2020 led by existing investor Valar Ventures.

“SVB is proud to support the Petal team with this warehouse facility as they strive to enable individuals to access and build credit responsibly,” said Brian Foley, managing director of warehouse lending at Silicon Valley Bank, in a written statement. “Reaching 100,000 cards approved is a significant growth milestone and we look forward to continuing to work with Petal as the company matures to the next phase of growth.”


Petal is not alone in gaining investor attention for helping people build credit. Earlier this month, San Francisco-based SeedFi, a financial health company, announced a $65 million raise led by Andreessen Horowitz that included $15 million Series A funding and $50 million in debt. SeedFi plans to use the funding to build out its platform aimed at Americans who don’t have adequate resources to build credit, save money, access funds and plan for the future.

BharatPe Pulls $108 Million in Series D Led by Coatue Management

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BharatPe, a Delhi-based financial services company, announced that it has raised $108 million in a Series D funding round led by the firm’s existing investor, Coatue Management. BharatPe has reached a total valuation of $900 million.

According to the official announcement, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo and Sequoia Capital also participated in the latest funding round. The Indian fintech company secured $90 million in its primary funding round and allocated $18 million to ensure a secondary exit for its angel investors and employees.

BharatPe has raised a total of $268 million in equity and debt to date. The company enables merchants to accept payments through any payment app. The company is also offering loans and interest-based services.

Commenting on the latest funding round, Ashneer Grover, Co-founder and CEO of BharatPe, said: “2020 has been an unprecedented year for all. However, we at BharatPe have grown exponentially, our payments business has grown 5x and our lending business has grown 10x in the last 12 months. This growth reiterates the trust that the small merchants and Kirana store owners have showed in us. This is just the beginning of our journey, and we are committed to building India’s largest B2B financial services company that can serve as the one-stop destination for small merchants. For BharatPe, merchants will always be at the core of everything we build.”

Indonesia based fintech GajiGesa closes $2.5 mn seed funding

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GajiGesa,a fintech company that offers Earned Wage Access and other services for workers in Indonesia, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Defy.vc and Quest Ventures. Other members included GK Plug and Play, Next Billion Ventures, Alto Partners Multi-Family Office, Kanmo Group and strategic angel investors.

The company was created last year by husband-and-wife team Vidit Agrawal and Martyna Malinowska. Agrawal was Uber’s first employee in Asia and has also operated in leadership positions at Carro and Stripe. Malinowska led product development at Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures and alternative credit-scoring platform LenddoEFL.

About 66% of Indonesia’s 260 million population is “unbanked,” which means they don’t have a bank account and have inadequate access to financial services like loans. Agrawal and Malinowska decided to launch GajiGesa in Indonesia because Malinowska worked with many unbanked workers while at LenddoEFL. While at Uber, Agrawal also worked with drivers across Southeast Asia whose average earnings were $250 USD a month (excluding Singapore), and he said the top issue they face was harassment by money lenders.

“These hardworking Indonesians had no fair or formal sources for easy access to capital. Further, the most common reason for borrowing was short-term liquidity issues,” Agrawal told TechCrunch. “But workers were forced to borrow either long-term, high-ticket-size loans or short-term loans with exorbitantly high-interest rates.”

Having immediate access to earned wages, instead of pausing for a semi-monthly or monthly paycheck, can help lighten financial stress and make it easier for workers to cope with their income and handle emergencies. Companies that have started immediate payment services for workers in other countries include Square, London-based startup Wagestream and Gusto.

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