Digital lending startup Qbera which is headquartered in Bengaluru has raised funds amounting to $3 million (about Rs 21.5 crore) in its first institutional fundraising since its establishment. The funding is an all-equity deal led by E City Ventures which is a subsidiary of Essel Group.
The funds raised in this fresh funding round are planned to be used by the one-year-old company in the expansion of its scope of operations. Also, the funds will be used to strengthen the company’s technology platform and expand its team.
“We are in eight cities presently, and will now expand the business to new cities like Patna, Chandigarh, Indore and Bhopal,” said Qbera founder Aditya Kumar. “We are currently getting around 10,000 loan applications per month. The target is to scale up to 50,000 in the next 12-18 months.”
Founded in 2017, Qbera gives personal loans to salaried individuals employed with small companies which are not catered to by mainstream banks. The company’s expansion plans will be supported by channel partners among payroll processors, direct sales agents and travel portals, among others.
However, the company requires the customers to have some amount of credit history. Most of Qbera’s products can be utilized as top-up loans on existing loans from traditional lenders. Prior to this, the company had secured $1.5 million in small rounds from high net worth individuals and few of its friends and family members.
“We have already disbursed around Rs 50 crore till date. Most of our loans are for an average tenure of 32 months and average ticket size of Rs 2 lakh,” said Kumar.
Qbera has a target of fourfold jump in its loan disbursal run rate to Rs 400 crore per year by the end of next financial year which is currently about Rs 100 crore. The startup planned to provide loan products of smaller ticket size for shorter durations and also eventually target self-employed borrowers.