Match-making platform for lenders and borrowers
Conventional lending systems in India have been generally driven by constraints such as elaborate procedures and rigid compliance checks, which prevent credit growth and delay credit dispensing, leaving credit seekers in a lurch.
Notwithstanding, home to in excess of 500 fintech start-ups, which seek to provide financial inclusion, at present, over 19 per cent of the country’s population remains unbanked.
While working in the banking sector for over two and a half decades, Manav Jeet noticed the existing lending marketplace in India is inefficient, uncertain, and tedious for customers as well as financial institutions. He went ahead to establish Rubique in 2014, a fintech start-up.
The company has recently raised an undisclosed amount in a funding round led by the investment subsidiary RSP India Fund, LLC of Japan’s Recruit Co Ltd and Russian venture capital management company, Emery Capital. The round saw participation from Blacksoil and existing investor Kalaari Capital.
“Rubique’s unique business model and technology thinking have an amazing capacity to get straight down to business to build a financially strong nation with easy access to credit to all sectors of the society — businesses and millennials. We believe that the deployment of technology to develop scalable and accessible financial services platforms, incorporating big data analytics and machine learning, will be critical to any lending business serving the underbanked and underserved in India,” said Ivan Savelyev from Emery Capital.
Leveraging advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, the Mumbaiheadquartered start-up deploys its proprietary algorithm that is integrated with the lending system of banks and other financial institutions, ensuring real-time processing.
Rubique claims unlike aggregator website showing product listing and confusing customer, its platform does match-making between borrower requirement and financial institutions’ lending criteria.
“We work on the credit policies of the banks and make algorithms of the credit policies to match borrowers with the lenders. On one side, we have financial institutions where we make the algorithms for the credit policies, and the other, we have financial advisors who collect the documents from the last mile,” said Jeet, managing director and CEO of the company.
The company has offices in 10 cities and caters services to about 30 locations. The company has around 6,000 business associates pan India. Banks, NBFCs (nonbanking financial institutions) and peerto-peer lenders among others use Rubique’s platform.
According to Jeet, his company has developed the “Online PLUS” model which uses artificial intelligence-driven technology to lower turnaround time, improve risk-assessment and KYC processes, and at the same time to deal with the regulatory requirement of document collection, provides support through its tech-enabled distribution force of business associates.
Rubique offers over 267 products, ranging from credit card, home loan, personal loan, car loan, two-wheeler loan, education loan, insurance, travel loan, business loan, loan against property, vehicle loan and many more. Having raised over $10 million in funding, Rubique has serviced over two lakh applications, disbursing ~26.70 billion loans and over 82,000 credit cards, almost 65 per cent of which is targeted to SMEs. Since inception, the company has generated revenue of around ~470 million ($7.2 million), clocking a revenue of around ~35 million month-on-month. Rubique has been unit economics positive at the transactional level and is aiming to break-even in 2019. As part of its revenue stream, the company gets paid from the financial institutions a certain percentage on completion of a transaction. Wherever, the company has provided technology, it gets paid per use basis.
Banks, NBFCs and peer-topeer lenders among others use Rubique’s platform