Arthan Finance secures ₹50 crore in Series B funding to accelerate expansion and tech investment

Arthan Finance, a new age lending-tech non-banking financial company (NBFC) focused on providing loans to self-employed nano and micro-entrepreneurs, has successfully raised ₹50 crore in its Series B funding round. This round was led by the Incofin India Progress Fund and saw the participation of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, a returning investor.

Kunal Mehta, founder and director of Arthan Finance, highlighted that the funding will allow the company to significantly expand its footprint, double its branch count, and enhance investment in technology to improve operational efficiency.

“We are currently present in three states- Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa. We've just expanded into Telangana with presence of 35 plus branches. We have a feet-on-street team of 275 plus employees, and we have disbursed over ₹500 crore over the last couple of years. This fundraising will significantly help us to increase our footprint, double up our branches, and at the same time increase our investments in tech to improve our operational efficiency significantly and service our customers better,” Mehta stated in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

Arthan Finance has been leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to streamline its operations and now aims to automate the entire underwriting process to reduce the turnaround time. Mehta highlighted, "We already have a baseline version of our AI/ML system that has significantly reduced our turnaround times for loan sanctioning.

Our goal is to automate the entire underwriting process to ensure secured loans are sanctioned instantly and disbursed within a minimal turnaround time. Currently, our turnaround time is close to seven days, and we aim to reduce it to three to four days."

In a separate development, Zypp Electric, an electric vehicle (EV) platform, has raised $15 million in a Series C funding round led by Japanese company Eneos. This equity funding also saw contributions from notable investors such as 9Unicorns, IAN Fund, Venture Catalysts, and WFC.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Akash Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Zypp Electric, described this funding as a pivotal growth round for the company, allowing it to expand in existing and newer markets.

"Currently, we operate in Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai. With this funding, we plan to expand our presence not only in these existing markets but also in new ones. We are operating around 21,000 EVs on the road, the largest fleet by any EV operator. However, we aim to scale this number to 1,00,000 and eventually to 5,00,000," Gupta explained.

Gupta highlighted that the company aims to achieve EBITDA profitability within the next six to eight months.

Looking ahead, Zypp Electric has an ambitious 15-city expansion plan. Gupta noted, "We are targeting cities like Chennai, Pune, Lucknow, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur. Our strategy is to first deepen our presence in current markets and then unlock a new city possibly every quarter."

Watch the accompanying video for the entire discussion.