Technological disruptions have not left financial sector out of its impact and India currently has several fintech startups developing out from its cocoon. Fintech startups mostly confined of online payment wallets and now online lending marketplaces.
i2ifunding a Peer to Peer platform where an individual can borrow money at a desired rate of interest and an investor can lend to retail borrowers according to their interest rates.
While P2P lending is still at a nascent stage in India, it is one of the leading means of financing in countries such as the US, the UK, Germany, China etc. and many p2p players have grown to become Billion dollar companies. It has been growing in leaps and bounds around the world, thanks to an increase in the internet penetration and tremendous acceptability of e-payments.
In context to India
RBI has already circulated draft guidelines for regulating P2P and once the final guidelines come it will establish P2P as an attractive investment option for investors as well.
RBI guidelines will also allow P2P platform to report the delays and default cases to credit bureaus. Thus it will act as deterrent against defaults at the same time improving the credit evaluation process for traditional financial institutions as well as P2P platforms.
“In India also we believe that P2P lending has got great potential. Govt. and RBI are working for financial inclusion by improving credit availability to sectors/individuals who were traditionally excluded from regular financial institution.” said Vaibhav Pandey founder of i2ifunding.
In a longer run we believe that platform which will have credible risk evaluation model utilizing innovation in technology space to minimize the effort in underwriting process will succeed.
Process of i2i funding for Borrowers and Investors
The methods of borrowing and lending are quite simple on i2ifunding that a simple internet user can use it effectively. Any user needs to follow the following steps:
Registration at i2i for Free:
Registration is free for all users. To register, fill in the personal details and create a login id. As part of registration process, your email id and mobile number will be verified. Post successful registration, users will be assigned a Relationship Manager and will have access to more functionality. To start financial transactions, user needs to either create a borrower or an investor account as per your requirement.
| Creating a Borrower’s Account | Creating Investor’s Account |
|---|---|
| To create a borrower’s account, user needs to fill a simple and easy online form regarding loan requirement, personal details, employment history and financial details along with scan of self-attested copies of required documents. | To create an Investor Account, user needs to fill a simple and easy online form regarding their investment requirement along with personal and employment details. Submit the scan of self-attested copies of required documents to complete KYC requirements and you are ready to invest. |
| Interest Rate for Borrowers
i2i helps the borrowers and the investors in setting the interest rate. |
Investor’s Wallet
After successful creation of investors’ account, Wallet will be activated along with a brief profile and investment preference. |
| Post the Loan A borrower can post the loan at an interest rate higher than or equal to the i2i Recommended Interest Rate. |
Invest in a Loan An investor can commit to lend a single or multiple borrowers. Before making the commitment, key |
Loan Gets Funded
To mitigate investment risks, a loan is funded by multiple investors. All the investors for a particular loan will enjoy same interest rate to avoid any speculation and should lead to fair discovery of market based assessment of borrower’s risk profile.
Physical Verification and Signing of Legal Contract
Once a loan is closed by the Borrower, i2i may conduct physical verification of the borrower along with matching the uploaded documents with hard copy / ID proof. In case of any discrepancy, the transaction will be cancelled along with severe penalty on the borrower which includes barring him / her for carrying out any new transaction at i2i.
For more info how to get/give loans, visit here.
Future Goals
Market has responded very well to our venture and we are growing 20% -30% month over month. Investors who initially started with smaller amounts have gained confidence and have started increasing their investment. In the last 11 months we have registered more than 4000 users on our platform. We also raised angel investment 2 Cr in May this year showing investors’ confidence in our venture.
We are also seeing interest from some financial institution to lend on our platform. This will gain more traction once RBI releases the final guidelines for regulating P2P in India.
Our focus is to keep delays and defaults to the minimum by continuously improving our proprietary credit risk evaluation model with the use of technology. In longer run, platform with credible repayment track record will move ahead of others.
Offering principal protection further shows our confidence in our underwriting process.
“We currently have investors from all across the country; however, borrowers are mainly from 4 metros. We are looking to expand to all major cities of India in next couple of years.”
We are investing very heavily in technology, and will be a technology driven platform which will help investors and borrowers transact very easily.