KreditBee gets $70m more, Chinese investors exit co

BENGALURU: KreditBee, an online lending startup, has raised an additional $70 million in less than a month of the last one to close the largest fintech fund-raise of the year, at $145 million. The financing also marks the full exit of Chinese investors Shunwei Capital and Xiaomi in KreditBee’s parent firm Finnov, where they held close to 25% stake.
Private equity major TPG-backed NewQuest Capital Partners and Motilal Oswal PE have led the latest funding and they will join the revamped board of Finnov, along with Premji Invest (Azim Premji’s investment office), which pumped a large chunk of the $75 million funding last month.
This marks the second prominent Indian startup to have given a full exit to Chinese investors, after local Twitter alternative Koo, since border tensions escalated between India and China last year. Just last week, Shunwei Capital sold its 9% stake in Koo.
Almost 50% of Finnov’s funding in the last two months has been used to buy out the Chinese investors along with Singapore-based Kunlun, while the rest of the capital was invested into the company as primary capital. Mirae Asset Ventures, Alpine Capital and Arkam Ventures are the other investors in the startup, along with ICICI Bank, which did not participate in this round. “I would rather choose a name like Motilal, a large name in the financial services sector. Of course, there’s no shying away from the recent geo-political developments,” Finnov co-founder and CEO Madhusudan E said.
KreditBee, which offers personal loans and consumer durable loans to young professionals, is planning to introduce more lending products and financial services products like gold loans and insurance. Finnov also owns KrazyBee, a non-banking financial company (NBFC).
“We are looking at doing a lot of pilots. We'll launch at least one digital lending and one financial service product in the next six months,” said Madhusudan. KreditBee has a loan book of more than Rs 1,250 crore. The median age of its borrowers is 29 years. More than 80% of its customers are from non-metro cities.
“The requirements of the average value-seeking middle class Indian can only be met by a multitude of lending products. One size doesn’t fit all. We are excited to become a shareholder of Finnov at this juncture and to support its next stage of development in offering innovative lending solutions to the dynamic India market,” said Amit Gupta, founding partner, NewQuest Capital Partners.