Bridging The MSME Credit Gap

With an innovative credit check and flexible repayment model, NeoGrowth has built a profitable business in digital lending to MSMEs

- Aprajita Sharma

Mumbai-based brothers, Dhruv and Piyush Khaitan, founded a digital payments venture in the 1990s. To leverage the experience in payments business, Piyush Khaitan established NeoGrowth in FY13 to lend to small businesses. He understood the problems that retailers faced in raising growth capital, and created an underwriting method based on card swipe data along with flexible repayment options.

“We decided to lend to consumer-facing small businesses and leveraged their PoS (point of sale) swipe data for credit assessment. We knew digital payments would continue to grow at a rapid pace over the next few years. We resolved to participate in that growth,” says Khaitan, Founder and MD, NeoGrowth.

The fintech firm recorded profits of ₹4 crore on revenues of ₹300 crore in FY19. Even during the NBFC crisis that shook the backbone of the financial system, NeoGrowth managed to stay afloat. It crossed ₹1,000 crore as asset under management (AUM) in FY19 and has grown 60 per cent since then. With an average loan ticket size of ₹12 lakh, the company has disbursed over ₹5,500 crore since inception. Its loan amount ranges from a minimum of ₹1 lakh to a maximum of ₹70 lakh at interest rates of 20-24 per cent.

It has raised ₹500 crore till date from investors including Omidyar Network, Aspada Investment Company, Khosla Impact, Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund managed by Quona Capital, IIFL Seed Ventures Fund and Leapfrog Investments. It has also raised funding from a mix of overseas and domestic lenders and borrowings from banks. “Till now, we have raised close to ₹1,600 crore of debt capital. Some of our debt investors are Blue Orchard, FMO (Dutch Sovereign Entity), Symbiotics, responsAbility, SIDBI and RBL,” says Khaitan.

Creditworthy