Online lending platform Avail Finance has closed an $17.2m investment led by Matrix Partners India.
Other participants to the round included Ola co-founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Flipkart co-founder & group CEO Binny Bansal, Freecharge founder Kunal Shah, and Mswipe founder and CEO Manish Patel.
Founded in 2017, Avail supports the blue collared workforce in India, which are currently underserved by traditional lenders. The company uses digital data and India stack, a set of APIs to utilise digital infrastructure, in order to offer simple lending and repayment processes across the space.
Loans can be taken out for a range of reasons, and can be paid back over a flexible schedule. The platform, which is only available on mobile, supports P2P lending to allow consumers to support borrowers needs, while making returns.
Avail Finance founder and CEO Ankush Aggarwal said, “By solving for the core of the problem in not having a credit history, using advanced technology, data sciences and artificial intelligence, we are bringing a new approach to an age-old problem. The huge chunk of people in the urban mass who are currently being ignored by the formal lending sector will stand to benefit from Avail’s solutions.”
Matrix Partners India has been very active in the FinTech market over the past few months. Earlier in the year, the firm took part in the $20m Series B round of online payments provider Razorpay. Other recent FinTech investments include POS provider Mswipe’s $40m Series D, credit scoring app CreditVidya’s $5m round, and small ticket business loan supplier Ziploan’s undisclosed backing from a group of investors.
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