Navadhan, a fintech company focused on rural areas, has secured $5 million in a pre-Series A funding round. Prime Venture Partners led the investment, with participation from existing investors Gemba Capital and Varanium NexGen Fintech Fund.
Navadhan plans to utilize the newly raised funds to improve its AceN tech platform. This platform acts as a link between small rural businesses and Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and banks. The startup aims to expand its distribution network and enhance its service delivery model.
Nitin Agrawal, Vijay Haswani, Anirudh Ramakuru, and Amit Biswal jointly founded Navadhan, which includes a non-banking financial company. Nitin Agrawal, a former executive at ICICI Bank, played a crucial role in establishing a rural finance business for Fullerton, India. He also served as the CEO of Spandana Sphoorty.
Navadhan’s AceN tech platform provides comprehensive customer fulfillment services, covering tasks such as sourcing, digital enrollments, credit underwriting, servicing, payments, and collections. The platform boasts access to credit lines exceeding ₹300 crore from 20 banks and NBFCs.
Nitin Agrawal said: “We are excited to have [Prime VP] join our journey in building a tech-led business model with a revenue-first approach and a vision of creating wealth for rural entrepreneurs. The new fundraise will add tailwinds to our efforts at building solutions to bring such small-businesses to the formal economy. We will continue to build it for bank, NBFCs to leverage on the regulatory advantage of priority sector assets.”
“The MSME sector in India has always been credit-starved, and yet remains one of the critical growth sectors in the country. Nitin, his co-founders and the Navadhan team have demonstrated an extremely viable and tech-driven model for distribution, underwriting, and robust collections, while leveraging co-lending to achieve meaningful scale,” said Sanjay Swamy, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners.
