Digital Lender Prest Loans secures USD 250K funding

Digital lending platform and RBI registered NBFC Prest Loans (www.PrestLoans.com), has secured debt funding of about USD 2.5 lakh (appr. Rs. 16.5 crore) from multiple lenders.

The lenders include AU Small Finance Bank, INCRED, MAS Finance, Northern Arc Capital (earlier IFMR) and other who have been with the company from very early stage itself. The company has seen 10X growth in lending on YoY basis and is on aggressive expansion plan.

The promoters have also recently infused another about USD100K (Rs. 65 lakh) in equity to further strengthen the technology platform and meet the growing demand of credit.

"The funding is an indication of confidence shown by lenders in our business. We got excellent support from various lenders within the first year of our operations and could raise debt largely due to strength of the business model, processes and technology being used. Some of our lenders have provided multiple tranches of credit based on our growth and track record. We have been growing our portfolio steadily month on month basis and have planned for robust growth in the portfolio in next few years," said funder and CEO Prest Loans, Ashok Mittal.

"We believe in touch and tech philosophy, so to provide a unique user experience to our borrowers we have kept most of the things very simple and easy for them to understand. Micro and Small business find it difficult to get credit due to lack of financial data while our tech driven underwriting model assesses the credit based on alternate data collected by us. We understand the issued faced by small time traders who don't have perfect financial statements but have good cash flow," added Mittal.

The company started its operations from Feb 2017 and has processed more than 3000 loan applications. It has disbursed loans to about 400 small business and MSME units from various sectors like auto ancillary, retailers, textiles, education and training, food processing etc. representing tier I and II cities.

With an average ticket size of Rs. 5 lakh the company has disbursed new loans worth Rs. 15 cr in last financial year. Most of the borrowers are small time traders and manufacturers who don't have access to formal credit from banks. The company has planned for aggressive expansion with the help of strengthening its tech driver lending platform.