Rubique ties up with banks, NBFCs for co-lending

Rubique, a digital lending platform, has forayed into co-lending of personal and business loans and has tied up with a few banks and NBFCs for this purpose, said its MD and CEO, Manav Jeet.

Sees better margins

The four-year-old fintech start-up, which is now focussed on personal loans, business loans and credit cards, sees co-lending providing better margins, when compared to the revenue stream from being a marketplace for lending products.

“Co-lending will be nothing but a private label product for our platform. While we will bring technology, data and distribution for the co-lending, banks are giving us the credit line. With co-lending, we are having skin in the game. Co-lending will also help us cater to segments that are not currently available,” Jeet told BusinessLine here.

Jeet, who founded the start-up, also said Rubique would eventually move towards becoming an NBFC from the point of view of regulatory reasons and the need to scale up co-lending.

“We are not looking to become an NBFC from the perspective of building book. We may take the NBFC licence for regulatory reasons. We will eventually move there if we have to do scale up co-lending,” he said. For co-lending, Rubique has so far tied up with two banks and two NBFCs.

Rubique, which is on an assisted online model with 10,000-plus business associates, is looking to close the current fiscal with loan disbursements of ₹1,250 crore, revenue of ₹35 crore and 90,000 credit cards issued. For the next fiscal, the aim is to achieve disbursements of ₹4,000 crore, get about 2.1 lakh credit cards issued and realise ₹147 crore revenues, Jeet added.

“Our aim to touch more cities and co-lending will help us grow next fiscal. For next two years, our focus is mainly to grow – reach more cities, add new products. We are now at six cities and we want to expand to 30 cities next fiscal,” he said.

Rubique recently signed up a large bank to provide its ‘credit decisioning engine’, where the start-up gets paid on a pay-per-use basis. Talks are on to provide this product to a rating agency as well as seven other financial institutions, he added.

Started in 2014, Rubique has so far disbursed loans worth ₹3,600 crore and facilitated issuance of 1.5 lakh credit cards. “We have made revenues of $10 million,” said Jeet. This start-up has, till date, raised $10 million (in Series A), and is backed by prominent investors, including Kalaari Capital, Japan’s Recruit Group, and Emery Capital (Russia).

On insurance, Jeet said Rubique will only be bundling insurance with its loans. “Lending will remain our core product. Insurance will only be bundled,” he said. For insurance, Rubique has already tied up with Tata AIG General Insurance and Bajaj Alliance General Insurance. The start-up is also in talks with Canara HSBC OBC Life and two other life insurers, he said.

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