InCred said the capital will be deployed across its core business verticals including consumer loans, student loans, and MSME Lending.
Unicorns in India: InCred Holdings, the holding company of financial services player InCred Financial Services, has announced that it is raising Rs 500 crore Series D round of equity funding from an undisclosed set of investors including a global private equity fund, corporate treasuries, family offices, and ultra high net worth individuals. The company said the latest round would catapult it to unicorn status. However, it didn’t disclose the post-money valuation.
InCred said the capital will be deployed across its core business verticals including consumer loans, student loans, and MSME Lending.
“The market for student loans in India has surged, driven by the doubling of US student visas issued to Indians from 50,000 to 100,000 over the past two years. The MSME business is seeing substantial growth, particularly in the secured LAP (loan against property) market nationwide. The consumer lending business is benefitting from healthy demand driven by overall economic growth as well as the usual festive season boost,” the company said.
Bhupinder Singh, Founder & Group CEO of InCred said, “With our ‘Risk First’ approach, cutting-edge technology, and class-leading management team, we are well-positioned for sustained growth in the business over the years to come. Our goal is to make InCred a central part of every Indian family’s financial aspirations, in line with the powerful growth seen by the Indian economy, and to eventually list the business unlocking significant value for all our shareholders.”
The company said it has built a loan book of around Rs 7,500 crore in six years and a compound annual growth rate of over 50 per cent over the last three years.
InCred Group operates across the BFSI sector through three entities – InCred Finance in lending to SMEs, merchants, etc., InCred Capital in wealth and asset management, investment banking and equities and InCred Money in retail bonds and alternative investments.
InCred and global investment firm KKR had last year in July completed the strategic merger of InCred Financial Services and KKR India Financial Services Limited (NBFC focused on business credit to create a non-banking finance company with better resources to meet the needs of retail borrowers and MSMEs.
Incred Finance had Oaks Asset Management, Moore Capital, Bahrain-based Investcorp, Elevar Equity, Paragon Partners, Anshu Jain (former Deutsche Bank chief), Ranjan Pai (Manipal Group chairman) and Landmark Holdings’ Founder and Chairman Gaurav Dalmia among its investors.
Importantly, a growing number of NBFCs are looking to cater to MSMEs amid rising competition from banks in vehicle, gold and home loans, FE had reported in June this year. Fresh unsecured business loans by NBFCs had increased by 24 per cent YoY to Rs 33,915.3 crore as of March 31, data by the Finance Industry Development Council and CRIF High Mark had showed.
