BINNY BANSAL BETS ON FINTECH LENDER RUPEEK

Binny Bansal and a top Silicon Valley investor, among others, infused funds

Rupeek, a fintech app that lets people secure loans against gold, has raised $60 million in its latest funding round, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal ( pictured) has put in money. So has top Silicon Valley investor GGV Capital along with Bertelsmann India Investments, KB Investments and Tanglin Venture Partners. Existing investors Sequoia India and Accel Partners also participated in the round. Rupeek did not disclose the break-up of investment by funders or its valuation, but sources pegged the five-year-old start-up’s valuation at $300 million.

Rupeek is a non-banking financial services company set up in 2015 by Sumit Maniyar. Essentially a modernday lending app, Rupeek lets people take loans against their gold assets. It claims that the process takes about 30 minutes to finish, and is entirely done online.

After the user completes the initial know-your-customer (KYC) formalities, Rupeek sends an executive to survey the gold at the applicant’s home or bank locker facility. Once approved, the loan is transferred directly to the applicant’s bank account.

“I am excited about how Rupeek is opening up access to formal credit for a large base of users. Its strong customer proposition and approach of partnering banks is truly a game changer for the unorganised gold loans space in India,” said Bansal.

Bansal had earlier invested $20 million in insurance start-up Acko in November. His other bets include robotics firm Greyorange, data platform Mobikon, medical start-up Sigtuple, cancer-screening start-up Niramai Health Analytix, and dairy internetof-things company Stellapps.

After exiting Flipkart in the late 2018, Bansal moved to Singapore, and currently heads technology consultancy business xto10x Technologies. According to reports, he may also be planning to launch his own venture capital fund.

His investment in Rupeek is in sync with his larger focus on fintech. The start-up claims it hands out loans averaging $28 million a month and has expanded its service to 10 cities, including all major metros. Since it does not have physical branches, it is able to offer loans at relatively lower interest rates than the market average, claims Rupeek. It also offers flexible repayment options. “Rupeek has turned a family’s dormant assets into an easy way to get a loan at affordable rates to grow its small business or pay for emergency needs,” said Hans Tung, managing partner at GGV Capital. He is frequently seen in the Forbes’s Midas List.

“With a marketplace of agents, Rupeek enables big Indian banks to offer competitive gold loan products at the privacy of customers’ homes by sending agents to people’s homes and depositing the gold at the nearest branch of the partner bank that offered the loan,” he said.