CreditMantri that enables you to know your credit score raises $7.6M funding

Customers can access their credit scores, learn how to improve their credit health, resolve past issues, and reduce current borrowing costs

Chennai-based fintech startup CreditMantri, which enables you access credit scores, has raised $7.6 million in Series B funding, led by US-based US-based Quona Capital, with participation from IDG Ventures, Newid Capital, and Elevar Equity.

The funds will go into growing its user base, strengthening the product proposition, and scaling the team.

“The funds raised will help us deliver a complete suite of products and services to give the Indian consumer better choice and make credit truly possible,” said Co-founder and CEO Ranjit Punja.

The company was established by Punja, R Sudarshan and Gowri Mukherjee (all former Citibank executives). CreditMantri aims empower consumers to know their credit potential and benefit from this knowledge. Customers can access their credit scores, learn how to improve their credit health, resolve past issues, and reduce current borrowing costs. In this process, they can discover products best matched to their credit profile.

The platform uses a combination of traditional data (credit reports) and alternative data (social media data from mobile phones).

CreditMantri claims it has served over 1.4 million users so far, with over 60 per cent of users providing access to over 2,000-plus credit relevant data points. All data is captured or shared only after obtaining explicit consumer consent.

On the supply side, CreditMantri provides financial institutions access to better quality consumer risk profiles besides helping these institutions cut down on expensive credit operations processes and disburse loans faster. Consumer demand data on the platform is used to create custom credit products to address unmet credit needs, for instance, providing unsecured personal credit lines for new to credit consumers or debt consolidation loans for credit challenged consumers.

This way, lenders don’t have to waste resources on applications that do not meet their credit criteria. As per a statement, over 40 lenders already use its site to source consumers, resolve past loan issues and expand into new customer segments.

“The richness in the quality of our credit profiles is validated by the uptake and portfolio performance of the tailor-made loan products launched in partnership with financial institutions. The response from consumers and lenders has far exceeded our expectations and validates that we are solving a real market need,” Punja added.

“Lending in India, and doing so responsibly, is a huge opportunity, and alternative data is the key to unlocking this potential. The digitization of Indian consumers’ financial data is the catalyst that will help build a truly financially inclusive India,” said Ganesh Rengaswamy, Founding Partner at Quona Capital.