EarlySalary, India’s first FinTech startup to offer Salary Advances and Instant Cash Loans, has announced its Series B funding of Rs. 100 Crores led by Eight Roads Ventures India. Existing investors IDG Ventures India, Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd. (DHFL) and seed investor Mr. Ashok Agarwal also participated in the round.
The company will be deploying these funds to accelerate its growth plans and target 100,000 loan disbursements per month by the end of 2018. The venture has disrupted the way young Indians are borrowing, replacing borrowing from friends, family and employers with borrowing real-time through a Mobile App from the comfort and convenience of their homes, and seeing money credited to their bank accounts instantly. The company has, for the first time, provided access to short term loans to young working professionals even without a credit bureau rating, using social media surrogates for risk assessment and machine learning scorecards for faster loans approvals.
Speaking on this occasion, Akshay Mehrotra, Co-Founder & CEO Early Salary said, “We are very excited to have Eight Roads Ventures India join our board. We see ourselves as a first line of credit for the young working India. We have three clear focus areas to work towards. Firstly, to further improve our technology stack and work on further investing in machine learning systems for better, faster and more prudent risk management. Secondly, to focus on building additional products and tenure options to help our customers across their varied cash needs. And thirdly, to leverage this better technology and broader product portfolio to grow our monthly volume to 100,000 disbursements by end of 2018.”
He further added, “The key to our success will be helping more and more people without any human interface. As we scale this, it will be our clear differentiator.”
Ashish Goyal, Co-Founder and CFO said, “What sets EarlySalary apart is its unique product proposition and its ability to provide customer experience using machine underwriting systems. Our relentless efforts aim to achieve a fine balance between customer experience, risk management and service millennials in a new way. With this additional capital, we are confident in expanding our ability to reach to more customers and have a stronger lending book to support our growth.”
Earlier in May 2017, EarlySalary had raised $4 Million (Rs. 27 crore) from IDG Ventures India and DHFL. In the last 7 months, EarlySalary received more than 1 million new app downloads and is already working with more than 100 large employers and partners to provide instant salary advances and short terms loans to young working professionals through the EarlySalary mobile app.
As a part of this transaction, Dhyanesh Shah, Principal at Eight Roads Ventures, will join the board of EarlySalary. He said, “The financial services market in India is ripe for disruption, and we have been actively looking for differentiated opportunities. EarlySalary has stood out for its unique consumer proposition and exceptional management team. The company has cleverly leveraged data and technology to provide instant affordable loans to an otherwise excluded customer segment. We look forward to working closely with Akshay, Ashish and the management team at EarlySalary.”
Mr. Ashok Agarwal, Director of Transcorp International Limited commented, “We believed in EarlySalary from day one and we are very excited to see it grow manifold. The Company has demonstrated capabilities to leverage path-breaking technologies to optimize consumer convenience. We are confident that this round of funding will be utilized to scale the business & take the company to the next level.”
Harshil Mehta, JMD & CEO, DHFL commented, “EarlySalary has been growing at the desired pace and has scaled up the business well. As digital solutions make our lives much more convenient, innovations in customer service will be at the core of business growth. As a fintech enterprise, EarlySalary continues to bring innovative solutions in the lending space by addressing a very relevant consumer need. This is backed by data analytics, consumer insights and strong technology backbone. We continue to look forward to supporting the talented team as they work towards expanding the business.”
Karthik Prabhakhar, Director & Head of Fundraising at IDG Ventures India added, “Over the last two years, EarlySalary has emerged as one of the fast-growing fintech players in the country with its cutting-edge technology platform, and is now amongst the market leaders in the real-time short-term loan business. We strongly believe that FinTech will pave the way for the younger generation to get access to quality credit and EarlySalary will lead the way.”