MicroGraam plans to disburse Rs 150 cr by 2020

City-based peer-to-peer lending platform MicroGraam on Monday said it plans to disburse Rs 150 crore by 2020.

"In the next five years, we certainly want to scale and grow, we wish to raise close to about Rs 150 crore in the next five years and reach 60,000 people," MicroGraam CEO Rangan Varadan told reporters here.

"The scale should bring us the break-even... and we want to innovate on loan products," he added.

MicroGraam is a peer-to-peer lending platform that empowers rural entrepreneurs with access to loans from socially minded investors. It was founded by Varadan and Sekhar Sarukkai (Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur) in 2010.

Former Infosys board member V Balakrishnan is the Chairman of MicroGraam.

Stating that the company has made the right beginning as it marks five years of its operation, Varadan said number of loan disbursed is 9,115,value of loan disbursed is Rs 13.14 crore, loans outstanding is at Rs 4.87 crore and the repayment rate is 98.3 per cent.

He said: "We have impacted over 9,000 borrowers, of which almost 8,900 plus are women. Our focus has been always strong on women based development..."

"We are in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, we have started moving into Andhra, Maharashtra, and we are now focusing a lot on North East, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Assam. We would be looking at focusing on Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where there is a lot of need and also Bihar," he added.

Some prominent investors of MicroGraam include ex- top brass of Infosys like Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan, V Balakrisnan; it also includes leaders from IT & multinational companies.

"MicroGraam is a very unique programme, it is a technology driven platform that connects both the borrowers and the lenders and makes sure there is a social impact element to it," Balakrishnan said.