Giving Credit

CREDITMANTRI IS CONTRIBUTING TOWARDS CREATING A HEALTHY CREDIT CULTURE IN THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM.

- Anand Adhikari

Ranjit Punja, 49, Founder and CEO of Chennai-based CreditMantri, is unlike of many other Fintech entrepreneurs. He spent over two decades with Citibank before the entrepreneur bug bit him. Ditto for the two other co-founders – R. Sudarshan, the Chief Operating Offer, and Gowri Mukherjee, who is the Chief Marketing Officer. The trio began their entrepreneurial journey in 2012 by offering credit improvement services or help borrowers improve their credit scores so that they could access credit from banks and non-bank finance companies. “The intention was to help people who are credit challenged,” says Punja.

The business model has evolved to cover all kinds of customers from the ‘first time credit seekers’ to ‘credit challenged’ and ‘credit healthy’. Currently, this eight-year-old fintech firm is catering to over 10.5 million users with access to 3,000-plus data points. Over 55 lenders, including leading public, private and foreign banks and NBFCs, use its platform to source customers and participate in resolving past loans. Some of its big partners include HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finance, Chola Mandalam, Mannapuram, Tata Capital, and others. Credit assessment of retail borrowers has been a pain point for banks, and given the challenges, CreditMantri has found wide acceptance.