Aye Finance, a fintech startup, has garnered funding to the tune of ₹180 crore. The funds have been raised as debt funding and the investors are from India as well as overseas. This funding exercise has been carried out over the past fortnight. It has to be considered an achievement of sorts at a critical time when most economic activity around the world has come to an absolute standstill.
Incidentally, the borrowers of Aye Finance are mostly MSMEs and they are all struggling to cope with the 21-day lockdown which, by all indications, appears headed for an extension beyond April 14. But Aye says it has offered a moratorium in line with the RBI notification in this regard.
Aye Finance has a large number of investors in its venture, both as equity investors as well as those providing debt lines for Aye to lend to its customers. The key investor in Aye is Capital G. Others include SAIF Partners, LGT, Falcon Edge, A91 Partners and MAJ Invest. The debt-line providers are HDFC Bank, SBI, Nabkissan, DCB Bank, FMO, Blue Orchard and Triodos. This is not the exhaustive list. There are other NBFCs and banks as well.
Aye Finance has, in one way, positioned itself as the guardian of MSMEs and boasts of over 200,000 borrowers who have availed funding from it either as fixed capital loans or to meet their working capital needs. The startup pursues a unique underwriting method in which it collects data from clusters and uses latest technological tools to make the risk assessment before the loan is approved.
Aye Finance itself has created a sound record in repayments etc. that has given the confidence to investors to trust it with additional investments. The freshly raised funds will be used to help the MSMEs at this time of crisis.