Digital lending platform Lendingkart wants to expand into a larger technology play
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Digital lending platform Lendingkart wants to expand into a larger technology play, side-stepping from its core lending business. The platform, which caters to small businesses lending to customers digitally, now wants to work in tandem with traditional lenders bringing their technical abilities to the table, helping them underwrite loans and source customers.
Through this partnership, the attempt would be to cater to a wider cross-section of MSMEs and also offer cheaper loans to these businesses.
This is an interesting move for a startup like Lendingkart which had historically been keen on a strong technology play in its business of giving out MSME loans. But now the platform wants to push forward its technology capabilities and prioritise this over building its loan book. Lendingkart already has a loan book of Rs 2,500 crore.
Explaining the rationale behind this move, Lunia said that as a platform Lendingkart gets around 3.5 lakh registered applications and 50,000 actually complete the registration process. Of this only around 12,000 to 15,000 applicants actually get a loan sanctioned by Lendingkart. By partnering with banks and NBFCs, Lendingkart intends to cater to a larger pool of customers.
COVID-19 has played a critical role in pushing Lendingkart down this way, since lenders want to aggressively digitise their loan origination and credit underwriting models, expertise Lendingkart can bring to the table.
