KrazyBee facilitates online loans for students, professionals in India; raises US$8M led by Xiaomi, Shunwei
KrazyBee’s portfolio includes e-commerce purchase, cash credit, two-wheeler credit, and college semester/tuition fees credit
KrazyBee, an online micro-lending platform in India, has raised US$8 million in Series A financing led by Chinese handset maker Xiaomi and its founder Lei Jun-owned Shunwei Capital.
E-city Ventures and RK Group also joined this round of funding, which is a mix of equity and debt.
This takes KrazyBee’s total funding received till date to US$13 million, which also include a US$2 million in seed funding from Chinese micro-lending platform Fenqile and YeahMobi in June 2016, and a US$3 million pre-Series A from Plum Ventures in December 2016.
The latest round of funding will be used for strengthening the risk model and algorithm, catering to new market segments and focusing on product diversification and geographical expansion in existing segments.
Madhusudan E, Founder and CEO of KrazyBee, said: “KrazyBee’s mission is to make credit for young professionals and college students in India accessible and affordable. Financial independence among young adults is the need of the hour. A solution which helps them avail personal finance at maximum ease and minimum time is going to win the game in this market.”
“We realised very early that to grow and sustain in this industry, having a steady source and lower cost of funds is quintessential, and this had been our focus right from the very beginning. We are actively working towards a risk algorithm that helps us achieve a system-generated decision on every profile, and we are optimising that further in terms of efficiency & accuracy. Also, being in the Fintech space, compliance is the key and hence, we follow all the regulations very strictly,” he added.
Shirley Mao, Investment Director at Xiaomi, said: “The Indian demography has a large population of urban young adults that spends a lot online and offline. For such an enormous ecosystem, the need for urgent personal finance for purchase requirements is highly underserved. An appropriate focus towards tech-based credit evaluation and compliant sourcing of funds can help capture and penetrate this market big time.”
Also Read: Singapore-based startup Turnkey Lender raises funding to automate loans management
KrazyBee’s current portfolio includes e-commerce purchase, cash credit, two-wheeler credit, college semester/tuition fees credit among others. The current segment being served comprises of young professionals and UG/PG students under the age of 30. At present, KrazyBee has more than 300,000 registered users.
Earlier this year, KrazyBee got an NBFC (non-banking financial corporation) license from India’s central bank RBI, which gives it a lot of flexibility to source and manage funds. There are six other NBFCs that are lending on the platform currently.
KrazyBee operates in close to 800 colleges in India. In each of these colleges, it has one or more student campus managers, depending on college strength. Currently, there are nearly 1,000 campus managers across all the cities.
The micro-lending platform has been operating across Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mysore and Vellore, and has recently expanded to Mumbai, Chennai, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Nashik and Manipal. As of today, it processes nearly 1,700 loan applications per day.
The app is available on Android and iOS platforms.
The company claims that till date, a credit line of over INR 150 crore has been rolled out in less than 18 months, of which over 50 per cent has been utilised. The average size of an e-commerce purchase via the platform is close to INR 12,000.
Micro-lending has been a fast-growing industry in India, with startups like LoanTap and MoneyTap already a hit among working professionals and students. In June this year, LoanTap closed its second round funding at US$4 million, from Kae Capital, India Quotient, IFMR Capital and MAS Financial Services. Kae Capital led this round. A few months before this development, MoneyTap secured a total of US$12.3 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from existing investors New Enterprise Associates and Prime Venture Partners.
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