As part of T-Hub’s third anniversary, TNM will be featuring five startups that have been with T-Hub since its inception and have grown into success stories.
Keerthi Kumar Jain had one simple goal. To make the process of loan disbursal simple and quick, especially when someone has an emergency and urgent requirement of a loan.
With this idea in mind, Keerthi along with his chartered accountant wife Neha Jain began working on launching a tech-driver system that could assess applications of borrowers in a paperless, contact-less environment. They developed a proprietary algorithm that could predict a borrower’s intent and willingness to repay a loan and disburse the loan in as less as 15 minutes.
Founded in 2014, Any time Loan uses a proprietary algorithm, developed by them that uses data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics to offer instant loans. The technology assesses the borrower’s ability to pay back and connects eligible borrowers with listed lenders.
How it works?
When you need a loan, all you have to do it register on the ATL app with some basic details such as PAN card, address proof and proof of occupation. ATL has a bot that scans the borrower’s digital footprint such as their social media accounts, online spending activities to determine if you’re someone who will pay back. Once the eligibility is established, it matches the borrower with a lender and the amount is instantly transferred to their bank account. This makes it a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform.
ATL offers a variety of personal and consumer loans ranging from educational loans, to loans to MSMEs. It offers loans for as low as Rs 1000, all the way to a few lakhs.
K12 loans are given at an interest rate of 0.1% per day, business loans at 0.05% per day and personal loans at 0.01% per day.
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Having started with just 19 employees, since inception, ATL has today grown into a team of 84 members and has also acquired Reserve Bank of India’s Non-Banking Financial Services (NBFC) P2P license.
At the time of receiving the accreditation from RBI, Keerthi said that the recognition from RBI is a strong validation of the startup’s sharp business model, processes and compliance with the RBI guidelines, given that RBI follows a very stringent due diligence process while granting this license, which involves eligibility criteria like financial stability, business continuity plan, and how the business will aid in RBI’s larger vision of financial inclusion.
ATL was one of the pioneers, as it claims, in this space. Over the past four years, the immense growth of the Fintech industry in India has helped ATL grow into a startup that today has a disbursement value of Rs 65 crore.
“When we started, there were no set regulations for P2P lending. It was still a grey area. So the first three years, we were mostly only figuring out the technology, the industry, getting our foundation set. Now that the foundation has been laid, especially in terms of the technology, it is only a matter of scaling for us,” Keerthi says.
It also just raised a Series A round of investment of Rs 1.5 million each from Bennett Coleman and Company, which runs the Times Group and from Network 18.
In April 2016, it first raised investment of about R 2.27 crore from several global executives from HSBC, Amazon, among others. In December last year, it also raised $4 million investment from Spice Mobility, which was to pick up a 30% stake. However, it bought back the shares while applying for RBI’s NBFC P2P licence.
It was a part of Yes Fintech accelerator, which helped it bag YES Bank as a lender on its platform. It was also a part of Uber’s UberEXCHANGE programme, where 10 startups won an all-expenses-paid trip to San Francisco, where they will visit Uber’s headquarters to meet the executive leadership team and be introduced to potential investors.
And these connects and opportunities, ATL attributes to T-Hub. Keerthi says that T-Hub acted as a catalyst in helping them overcome challenges. Access to accelerators such as YES Fintech was one such support. “As a startup we need a lot of support to reach out to corporates and make them understand what we’re doing. We need someone to facilitate these connects and T-Hub has greatly helped us there. Even in terms of reaching out to the right investor at the right time and negotiating with the investor to ensure the startup’s interests are safeguarded – T-Hub played a very vital role here,” Keerthi adds.
Since inception, ATL has registered gross transactions of Rs 107 crore, disbursing around 8000 loans a month and has a disbursement value of Rs 65 crore.
Keerthi says that its proprietary algorithm has ensured that its Non-performing assets (NPAs) are as low as 0.27% as of FY18. NPAs is a term used for loans that default in paying back.
Given the growth it is seeing, ATL is targeting a monthly disbursal rate of Rs 50 crore a month, up from the current Rs 6 crore a month by 2020.