Consumer lending startup MoneyTap Monday said it has raised about $70 million (Rs500 crore) in a Series B funding round led by Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG), RTP Global and Sequoia India, along with a clutch of undisclosed South Korean and Japanese investors.
Existing investors Prime Venture Partners and MegaDelta also participated in the round, the company said in a statement. Debt has been secured from Vivriti Capital, Credit Saison and others in the form of co-lending and credit lines. lines.
The company had previously raised a total of $12.3 million, the statement added.
MoneyTap will use the money to invest in technology, data science, and launch its own non-banking financial company (NBFC). The lending startup also has plans to expand its footprint to 200 Indian cities, and grow its loan book to Rs5,000 crore in the next 12-18 months.
“Our mission has been to provide credit to the growing middle-income groups, in the most flexible, convenient and affordable manner, with money being available to the customer on tap. We will use this funding to scale our business, innovate with data-backed lending models and continue to hire aggressively. We will also use the funds to expand our credit offerings via our own NBFC,” Anuj Kacker, co-founder of MoneyTap, said.
Founded by entrepreneurs Bala Parthasarathy, Anuj Kacker and Kunal Varma in September 2016 as an app-based consumer credit line, MoneyTap targets salaried individuals with salary upwards of Rs 20,000 every month. With the tap of a button, the app lets a borrower as little as Rs 3000 or as much as Rs 5 lakhs depending on the credit limit that is set by its banking partners.
MoneyTap secured an NBFC licence in September 2019, and claims to have a loan book of Rs1,000 crore. It last raised $12.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia India in June 2017.
“The ever-increasing digitisation of India’s economy and financial services industyr has created compelling opportunities, particularly for India’s emerging fintech companies. MoneyTap’s unique line of credit products addresses the significant need for consumer credit that is seamlessly distributed to end-users. We believe they are the leaders in the industry in terms of volume growth and managing risk at scale,” said Max Chee, head of Aquiline Technology Growth.
Some of MoneyTap’s competitors in the space include ZestMoney, IndiaLends, PaySense, among others.
Mumbai-based PaySense was recently acquired by digital payments gateway provider PayU at a valuation of $185 million. ZestMoney raised $15 million in an extended Series B funding round led by American investment banking giant Goldman Sachs in December last year.
The digital lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) is projected to increase between 10 and 15 times by 2023, to about 100 billion in annual disbursements, according to a joint study by Omidyar Network and Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
