Navadhan, a rural fintech startup, has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by the fintech-focused fund Varanium NexGen. The round included Anicut Capital, an existing investor, and Gemba Capital. Anicut Capital had co-led the funding.
The fintech startup plans to use the funds to expand and enhance its AceN Tech platform. The platform bridges banks, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), and rural small businesses (MSMEs) by enabling seamless connections and interactions.
Navadhan claims it has onboarded over 200,000 customers and disbursed over Rs 100 crore. It has a network of 15 lenders, including Ugro, Vivriti, Northern Arc, Caspian, Unitus, and TruCap.
Navadhan, a company founded in 2019 by Nitin Agrawal, Vijay Haswani, Anirudh Ramakuru, and Amit Biswal, uses data science to evaluate the digital footprint and cash flow surrogates. According to the startup, it solves the lack of income proofs and documents which has kept the banks away from such markets.
Commenting on the fundraise, Agrawal said, “We are leveraging Tech using alternative-credit, predictive analytics backed by data sciences. With both Tech and People on-ground, we are making it work for the NBFCs and Banks to generate priority sector assets.”
As smartphone and internet penetration are expected to rise by 44% by 2030 and grow significantly in rural areas, Navadhan aims to exploit these market opportunities. According to the startup, most of the future growth will come from rural areas, as the number of UPI transactions reaches the $4 Tn mark.
In the future, Navadhan plans to provide services like credit limits and tech tools for digitizing unorganized value chains.
