Enthused by a robust wave of India’s march within the areas of Jan-Dhan (Banking accounts), Aadhar (KYC options) and Cell (contactability/ alternate knowledge), Ritesh, Deepak and I (classmates from Indian Faculty of Enterprise 2009) began FlexiLoans.com in 2016 to serve the deserving but unserved micro and small companies throughout India utilizing data-backed credit score underwriting and know-how infrastructure for superior buyer journeys.
After we met our first set of e-commerce and service provider platforms for distributing enterprise loans digitally utilizing surrogate knowledge inside 48 hours, we had been welcomed with a purple carpet. Our potential traders/ lenders, nonetheless, wished to see the traction and credit score behaviour giving us the primary lesson that in lending threat is rewarded greater than ebook development and potential.
Quickly, FlexiLoans grew to become one of many main lenders for e-commerce sellers promoting on platforms equivalent to Shopclues, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, and lots of extra. Throughout 2016-17, Indian MSMEs witnessed 2 massive macro modifications: a) demonetisation; and (b) Introduction of GST regime — pivotal modifications for the Indian small companies.
We developed surrogate underwriting fashions primarily based on POS pay-outs, e-commerce gross sales that guarantee seamless supply of credit score and data-backed eligibility computation for loans, which was extraordinary until then. Covid interval from 12 months 2020-22 additional spiralled the digital adoption of the Indian companies, and as we speak we obtain over 3.5 lakh month-to-month functions and over 10 lakh month-to-month visits to our digital platforms. The lesson learnt right here is that India is a really massive underserved and excessive potential market, ready for disruption in lending by class defining lending corporations like FlexiLoans.com that leverages knowledge and know-how to service the loans viable
Throughout 2019, Indian NFBCs suffered an enormous setback put up PNB and ILFS disaster the place the funding actually dried up and sanctions which might take a number of weeks to get disbursed began taking months. We learnt a troublesome lesson then that legal responsibility and liquidity administration is without doubt one of the trickiest and a core job at Lending and if not set as a disciplined course of, can hamper development. We developed co-lending options for our prospects together with a number of outstanding banks and NBFCs and these got here very helpful in 2021-22 when funding state of affairs for lending was once more tight owing to covid however 70% of our AUM development was catered seamlessly by our associate lenders through our co-lending platform. Our legal responsibility franchisee is as we speak diversified with over 25+ Banks and FIs lending to us straight and a number of co-lending companions.
Lastly, the COVID interval was a real take a look at for any lender and we learnt the virtues of empathy, communication and know-how in our Assortment efforts. We stored in fixed contact with our prospects, expanded our reachability to the purchasers, restructured their loans at a buyer stage understanding and landed at credit score prices of <5% even through the Covid years and least buyer escalations. We used know-how instruments to remind prospects, get funds and replace them on their monitor information.
In abstract, the final 6+ years have seen one of many hardest macro financial environments for Indian MSMEs however on the identical time, noticed the Indian Digital Stack gaining monumental power aided by regulatory assist. We are actually amongst the main Fintech Lenders within the nation with over ₹1,000 crore of AUM, over ₹4,000 crore of annual disbursement run fee and amongst the few worthwhile fintechs supported by the belief and assist of our valued prospects and stakeholders. In lending, one is judged by the flexibility to develop threat sensitivity than mortgage ebook.
Manish Lunia is the co-founder of FlexiLoans.com
