Digital gold loan offering startup has received an investment of $12 million (Rs. 78 crore). The company has already been backed by Sequoia Capital and the current tranche will bring on board Accel India and Lok Capital, an investment firm with focus on financial inclusion. This is also an early stage funding, reports the Economic Times
Giving out further information about the functioning of the startup, it is learnt that Rupeek has reported a revenue run rate of $1million and the loan portfolio is increasing by an amount of Rs. 2 crore each year.
Apart from these investments, Rupeek has also got funds through Anand Chandrasekaran, Facebook executive and a former Snapdeal chief product officer. Since, in the Indian context, only NBFCs are permitted to lend, Rupeek has tied-up with a NBFC company for handing out the loans to the customers.
In terms of the actual operations, the nature of the business demands that there is physical interaction also, for which Rupeek has created branches to facilitate walk-in customers being serviced with loans against pledging of gold. There is also an arrangement for doorstep collection and delivery of gold.
Rupeek has a standard model of one-year tenure for the loans against gold that it offers and claims it has setup best-in class security for the valuables pledged with them.
There are many NBFCs in the gold loan segment, both in the brick and mortar model and the online route. One of them have received funding from Sequoia Capital too. Within the online space, Gold Uno and Achievers Quick Gold Loan, which is an NBFC.