Chinese smartphone and digital electronics major Xiaomi has brought its micro lending vertical to India. In its home country, the loan product is known as Mi Credit and in India, it will be CreditBee, and it has partnered with KrazyBee for the same. For the record, Xiaomi has already made investments in KrazyBee and now could drive the lending operations also.
The online lending facility will allow a person to apply for credit ranging from Rs 1,000 - 100,000 and will be based on the individual’s income. The duration of the loan would be for 3 months and the interest rate 3% per month. The product is already live online and a formal announcement may come soon.
Xiaomi already has the EMI model of lending to its customers on its own website Mi.com where it sells its mobile phones and the new CreditBee product could be made part of that offering besides positioning it as a ‘no-questions-asked’ personal loan.
KrazyBee’s focus has been on student loans and it has received funding from Xiaomi and through Shunwei Capital, Xiaomi’s venture capital arm floated by the founder.
Xiaomi has made one more investment in the Indian fintech startup space; the company’s name is ZestMoney. Incidentally ZestMoney is also a participant in the lending that Xiaomi does on its site in the form pf EMI payments for purchasing Mi and Redmi series phone from the Xiaomi stable.
But everyone seems to agree that Xiaomi’s major push towards lending is aimed at enhancing the sale of its products through its Mi.com site. After having already scaled the overall mobile market in India with a leading market share, the company plans to do the same in the online sale of smartphones as well. It has only been able to reach 10% so far in competing with the giants Flipkart and Amazon.