Aye Finance raises USD 10Mn from responsAbility and Northern Arc

Aye Finance, the CapitalG backed fintech lender, on Thursday announced raising funds worth USD 10 million in debt funding from leading global impact investment manager, responsAbility and Northern Arc.

With this latest funds, Aye aims to gear up and bolster its lending portfolio and offer affordable business loans to a larger number of microenterprises in India.

Micro enterprises are at the bottom of the MSME hierarchy of businesses and Aye's mission is linked to raising this financially excluded sector and bringing it into the folds of organized finance.

The MSME lender has designed its acquisition and credit assessment processes that mirrors the comfort of the micro entrepreneur, and is fast emerging as the leader in micro lending space having disbursed over Rs. 1250 crores to over 1,00,000 customers.

"We have established that our unique Cluster Based Credit Assessment methodology has the capability to scale up rapidly while delivering good value to our customers. And despite the bearish sentiments in the market, we have continued to get support from the industry in our mission to transform micro enterprise lending in India, as we continue to demonstrate robust metrics on growth and quality," said MD Aye Finance, Sanjay Sharma.

"responsAbility-managed funds have been providing funding for financial institutions targeting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises for the past 15 years. We are pleased to partner with Aye Finance, a successful player that leverages its technology backbone to drive financial inclusion and promote economic growth of un-organized business enterprises," said Jaskirat S. Chadha, Senior Investment Officer at responsibility.

"Northern Arc's association with Aye Finance goes back over 4 years, during which time we have worked together on various domestic and offshore transactions with the sole aim of catalysing growth in this under served and important sector. We are pleased to have partnered with responsAbility on this important transaction and look forward to continuing to partner with Aye Finance on its exciting journey," said Dr Kshama Fernandes, Chief Executive Officer of Northern Arc Capital.