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LenDenClub, a peer-to-peer lending firm, on December 7 said it has raised $ 10 million in a Series A round from investors such as CRED founder Kunal Shah and cricketer Hardik Pandya.
The startup will use the money to grow its loan book to a billion dollars and its customer base from 2.5 million currently to 10 million in FY23.
“We have been constantly inventing products that yield greater returns for our investors and democratising credit while offering market competitive rates for our borrowers,” said Bhavin Patel, co-founder and CEO of LenDenClub.
He added that “futuristic, customer centric-products and seamless digital experience” backed by “a focused market expansion approach”, is what aided the exponential growth of LenDenClub.
Other investors in the round include Tuscan Ventures, Ohm Stock Brokers, Artha Venture Fund, Policybazaar co-founder Alok Bansal, Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma, and GVK Infra board member Krishna Bhupal.
Founded in 2016 by Bhavin Patel and Dipesh Karki, LenDenClub has salaried employees, usually with a monthly income of over Rs 1 lakh and high net-worth individuals (HNIs), registered as lenders on its platform, with blue collar employees generally the borrowers on its platform.
It has disbursed Rs 1,200 crore in loans in FY21 so far, and wants to grow disbursals by five times in the next 18 months.
While a host of P2P lending players cropped up in the last three to four years, many have been bogged down by high default rates, poor customer quality, lack of checks and balances and an implosion of the P2P industry in China a few years ago.
LenDenClub however says its defaults are between 3-6 percent and that it is profitable.
Shah’s CRED also runs a P2P lending platform called Mint, where borrowers can earn relatively higher rates of interest by lending to customers on CRED’s platform — vetted and credit-worthy individuals.
