EarlySalary gets Rs 100cr in series-B funding

Pune: Pune-based fintech startup EarlySalary has received a series-B funding of Rs 100 crore led by Eight Roads Ventures India.

Existing investors IDG Ventures India, Dewan Housing Finance Ltd and seed investor Ashok Agarwal also participated in the round, resulting in largest funding ever received by the company so far.

The company plans to use the money to double its loan portfolio and further its technology set-up. It provides short-term (7-30 days) pre-payday loans to people, largely over an app-based set-up for an interest rate that works out to be slightly more than that of a credit card loan.

“We have three clear focus areas to work towards. Firstly, to further improve our technology stack and work on further investing in machine learning systems for better, faster and more prudent risk management. Secondly, to focus on building additional products and tenure options... And thirdly, to leverage this better technology and broader product portfolio to grow our monthly volume to 1,00,000 disbursements by end of 2018,” Akshay Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO, EarlySalary, said.

EarlySalary uses a range of traditional and contemporary tools like social media profiles of individuals to make its lending decision. It has, so far, given out 85,000 loans worth Rs 120 crore. That translates to an average of Rs 14,118 per loan.

It has so far raised $5.5 million (over Rs 35 crore) in seed capital and series A funding over the past 8-9 months. In the current round, Eight Roads Ventures will be putting in approximately Rs 50 crore and the balance will be put by others. The startup works with more than 100 employers to provide instant salary advances and short terms loans to young working professionals. It also recently tied up with e-commerce player Amazon to fund consumer durable purchases of customers.