<article><a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Sequoia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sequoia</a>-backed online lending firm <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Capital Float" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Capital Float</a>, which caters to the SME segment, on Tuesday announced that it has acquired personal finance management startup <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Walnut" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Walnut</a> for $30 million in a cash-and-stock deal.</article>

<a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Sequoia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sequoia</a>-backed online lending firm <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Capital Float" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Capital Float</a>, which caters to the SME segment, on Tuesday announced that it has acquired personal finance management startup <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Walnut" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Walnut</a> for $30 million in a cash-and-stock deal.
As part of the acquisition, Walnut’s founders Patanjali Somayaji and Amit Bhor will join Capital Float&#8217;s leadership team, and its 35 employees will also join the SME lender.
The acquisition would further help Capital Float strengthen its new consumer-lending business.
&#8220;We loved the new platform named Walnut Prime, which is a credit line product, and (Walnut’s) acquisition will help us strengthen the consumer-lending vertical that we started a few months ago,&#8221; said Gaurav Hinduja, co-founder of Capital Float.
Operated by Pune-based Thumbworks Technologies Pvt Ltd, Walnut is a personal finance management mobile app that helps users automatically track spends, bank and card balances, and bill payments. Founded in 2014, the startup claims to have witnessed 7 million downloads in India, and has a million monthly active users and 300,000 daily active users.
It recently launched Walnut Prime which allows its users to access consumer loans up to Rs1 lakh to be directly moved into their bank accounts
With this acquisition, Capital Float wants to increase its loan book to Rs 5,000 crore by the end of this fiscal, and expand its customer base to 5 lakh from about 1.25 lakh at present. Also, Capital Float plans to leverage its presence in 100 locations in the country to expand Walnut’s coverage significantly from around eight locations currently.
Started in 2013, Bengaluru-based Capital Float is operated by Zen Lefin Pvt Ltd, an NBFC. Its stated focus is extending collateral-free loans to small and medium-size businesses, besides merchants and individual entrepreneurs. Capital Float’s customers include small and big merchants selling on e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, retailers and wholesalers, restaurants, and kirana stores among others.
In April, Capital Float raised a debt investment of Rs48 crore (around $7 million) from Triodos Investment Management. The same month, it raised $22 million in equity funding from Amazon Inc., taking the total equity funding to $107 million. Other investors in the company include SAIF Partners, Aspada Investments, Creation Investments Capital Management and Ribbit Capital.
Capital Float competes with other online SME focused platforms such as Lendingkart and Aye Finance.

Founded in 2014, the startup claims to have witnessed 7 million downloads in India, and has a million monthly active users and 300,000 daily active users. 

Sequoia-backed lending startup Capital Float acquires Walnut for $30m

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Sequoia-backed lending startup Capital Float acquires Walnut for $30m

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