New Lenders in Town

A new breed of fintech lenders is creating a niche segment.

APUNE-BASED FINTECH, EarlySalary, offers instant bridge loans till the next salary credit to young working professionals. Bangalore-based Buddy is another fintech serving the student community, offering loans for shopping on e-commerce platforms. Fintech start-up Capital Float is serving the niche MSME segment. All these start-ups have one common thread - onbook lending.

Is there a future for such fintechs? These newbies are hoping to carve out a niche in a bank and NBFC dominated financial system. They are increasingly leveraging technology and alternate data sources for expanding the boundaries of credit access and are reaching out to underserved segments like SMEs, organised and unorganised sector employees. “Some of the startups such as Indifi Technologies, Capital Float, Aye Finance, Origa Leasing, Lendingkart, India Lends, etc. have emerged to provide fast, easy, alternate data based collateral loans to small businesses, in some cases in less than 48 hours,” says Gayathri Parthasarathy, Partner & Head, Financial Services Advisory, KPMG in India.