Online lending platform Kissht raises $30 mn in Series C funding

Online lending platform, Kissht, has raised a series C round of $30 million from a group of investors led by Vertex Ventures SE Asia & India and Sistema Asia Fund. Existing investors Fosun RZ Capital, Ventureast and Endiya Partners also participated in the fresh round.

Kissht (meaning EMI in Hindi) provides small ticket size consumer and personal loans to its customers through a financial technology platform which is integrated with online and offline merchants.

The company plans to use the funds in expanding its geographical presence and product development. It will also use a part of the fresh equity to create a lending pool of $100 million in the next 12 months where in it will also tie up with banks and leading NBFCs.

Founded in 2015 by Krishnan Vishwanathan and Ranvir Singh, Kissht had raised about $13.5 million in its earlier rounds.

Enabling access

Talking to BusinessLine , Krishnan Vishwanathan said that the company is trying to be the go-to platform for all kinds of consumer and personal finance requirements of customers, with an income level of ₹10,000 to ₹50,000 per month. They can be working in both formal and informal sectors.

“There is a huge opportunity in the lending space in India with credit penetration at a mere 7 to 8 per cent. Compared to this, the developed markets are at 100 per cent and the developing markets like China are at 40-50 per cent already. India has a large base of underserved customers who do not have any credit score or data. We depend on alternate data to lend to such customers,” Vishwanathan said.

Dhruv Kapoor, Managing Director at Sistema Asia Capital, said, “India is a credit starved country with a $140 billion (approximate) annual credit gap that Kissht is addressing through its proprietary technology and innovative financial products.”

Kissht has developed a proprietary self-learning algorithm, which assesses customer’s credit profile in a fraction of a second based on over 2,000 digital footprints, Vishwanathan said.

Currently, Kissht is present in over 50 online and 3,500 offline points of sale across categories including consumer durables, electronics, health, alternative energy and education; enabling customers to easily access credit for their purchases.

It is present in 35 centres and plans to touch 100-150 centres in the next two years. It disburses loans worth around ₹60 crore every month and plans to double it to ₹120 crore by March end. All the loans are disbursed from the company’s balancesheet.

Focus ahead

About 85 per cent of the company’s loan portfolio goes towards consumer or purchase finance. However, it expects a faster growth in the personal loan segment, where the ticket size is about ₹70,000 to ₹80,000, as the propensity to take multiple personal loans is higher today.

“We provide personal loans to customers who have transacted with us through consumer loans at least once. Personal loans will help us create more sticky and repeat customers,” said Vishwanathan, adding that in the coming months, personal loans will be bundled with insurance and warranties. Besides, the risk cost is lower in personal loan and yields better margins than the consumer loans. Kissht, however, doesn’t provide loans to students or customers with irregular repayment history.

The company also works to ensure that its NPA is at 1.5 per cent compared to the industry average of 3 per cent. It also expects to breakeven at an operating level by March 2019. “We will be profitable when we have a monthly run-rate of ₹100–₹120 crore,” Vishwanathan added.

Ranvir Singh, Co-Founder of Kissht, said, “Taking a loan remains a deeply undemocratic experience in India. Customers not only want a loan, but they want it in a jiffy. Unlike traditional players, we have been neither timid nor tentative in leveraging data. We have just scratched the surface in purchase financing. We aspire to create the indelible experience of dignified lending, which will drive customer loyalty.”

Kissht provides and sanctions loans within 2 to 3 minutes where as NBFCs take a day to process the loan because they do not rely on alternate data and still depend on physical documents.

COMMENT NOW