LN Revathy

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company Cashkumar, which offers short-term credit to borrowers, foresees huge potential to lend in the online space.

Dhiren Makhija, co-founder of Cashkumar, told BusinessLine that since commencing operations in 2017, the company has expanded its operations to nine cities. “We expanded to Coimbatore last month, followed by a soft launch in Ahmedabad. We are planning to expand to Hyderabad as well soon.”

At present, the company services around 200 loans a month . It is targeting to service about 80 loans a day in the next six months, besides expanding operations to 20 cities by next year.

“We are growing at close to 30 per cent month-on-month. Our target segment is salaried employees, particularly those looking for short-term credit,” he said, and cited instances of borrowers looking for funds to meet an emergency, such as medical and marriage expenses, among others.

Debt consolidation

“Banks invariably do not entertain such applications. For instance, an employee, due to some medical emergency, could have defaulted on making his monthly remittance on a home loan. We step in and help the borrower,” he explained, before adding that the requirement might not be huge, it could be in the order of ₹50,000-1 lakh.

“Fifteen per cent of our borrowers have taken loans for debt consolidation. The tenure is typically between three months to a year and for amounts not exceeding ₹1 lakh,” he said.

The company has disbursed over 1,500 loans to a book size of over ₹6 crore.

There are also lenders registered on the platform who invest in loans and earn good returns, said Makhija, and added that Cashkumar is among the select few to have been awarded an NBFC-P2P licence by the Reserve Bank of India

Its revenue is around ₹5-10 lakh a month.

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