VMPL
New Delhi [India], March 19: Rural-fintech Navadhan has raised Series A equity funding round with its initial target of 80 Cr oversubscribed to 111 Cr. The round is led by NabVentures, the venture Capital arm of NABARD. Prime Ventures is the co-lead with participation from LNB Group, also an LP in VC funds/ AIFs investing in tech startups. Other existing investors also doubled down – Varanium NexGen Fintech Fund, Gemba Capital, Faad, VC-Grid and Anicut.
In the last 3 years, Navadhan has closed 4 funding rounds. The new 111 Cr Series-A funding will be used to fuel business growth and enhance the company’s AceN tech platform. It already has over 700 Cr of debt lines available from more than 25 Bank/ NBFCs onboarded on its AceN platform which enables API integrations.
Navadhan is co-founded by Nitin Agrawal along with 3 teammates – Amit Biswal, Vijay Haswani and Anirudh Ramakuru, each with 15-25 years of experience in financial services domain. They developed the AceN tech platform that facilitates working capital financing to rural small businesses (MSMEs). MSMEs is a big focus area for the government to enhance employment generation at local level in rural and semi-urban areas.
Speaking on the fundraise, Nitin Agrawal, Founder of Navadhan said: “We are happy to find investors who share our mission of creating new-wealth (Nava-dhan) for the rural-preneurs. At an early stage, Tech investors helped us in building the AceN tech platform. We are very excited now to have NabVentures since rural-MSMEs is our core customer segment. Also, happy to have support from LNB family office with a vantage of running seasoned businesses in India.”
NabVentures comes from NABARD’s ecosystem which is India’s apex development bank aimed at promoting sustainable and equitable agriculture and rural development. Ashish Choudhary, CIO of NabVentures said: “Navadhan has demonstrated a calibrated growth of 12x in the last 3 years while maintaining good asset quality. Building the AceN Tech platform alongside has helped them do Co-lending seamlessly to break the barriers in leveraging capital far more efficiently compared to traditional NBFCs.”
“We’re pleased to continue to back Nitin and the Navadhan team to serve rural small businesses at scale. Navadhan’s AceN tech platform is one of the more advanced tech platforms that builds on top of IndiaStack to provide differentiated underwriting capabilities and this has played out in the performance metrics of Navadhan”, said Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner, Priven Advisors, Advisory to Prime Venture Partners
Aparajit Bhandarkar of Varanium NexGen said: “With the power of data science, Navadhan’s proprietary alternative underwriting model assesses the digital footprint and cash flow surrogates. This solves the lack of income proofs and limited banking track record in the predominantly cash-based economy to enable credible lending to nano entrepreneurs across rural and semi-urban markets.”
Amit Mehta of LNB Group said: “We believe that Navadhan has the right founder-market fit to build a business towards an IPO. We like the focus on building the capital efficient lending network, especially in the priority sector lending space. We are coming into the company at a crucial stage when the business is poised for sustainable growth for many years to come.”
Navadhan has both people and Tech on the ground with a brick to click model, critical build for scale where trust and collection efficiencies are key to success. This startup team invested the first two years in building the AceN tech platform before starting lending operations. AceN has full-service customer fulfilment workflows with a paperless, seamless customer journey from on-boarding, underwriting, servicing to multi-mode collections. AceN also has proprietary data sciences backed tech-tools embedded into its workflows. Navadhan’s own NBFC licence has played a crucial role in ensuring regulatorily compliant workflows. Navadhan has grown its presence in 700 PIN codes across 5 states of MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka and Odisha. It plans to go deeper in geographies and diversify its loan offerings. 
About Navadhan:
Navadhan Capital Private Limited (Navadhan) is Rural-Fintech startup with an NBFC licence from RBI. Navadhan was founded by industry veteran, Nitin Agrawal, along with co-founders Vijay Haswani, Anirudh Ramakuru, Amit Biswal. The team brings together extensive experience in financial services, credit risk, business development, finance partnerships and technology. Navadhan aspires to become the largest finance platform for Rural India by connecting NBFCs/Banks with Small Businesses/ Microenterprises (MSMEs) through the sourcing and servicing of financial services.
About NabVentures:
NABVENTURES is a venture growth equity fund that invests in agriculture, food, rural businesses and agri/rural financial services at early to mid-stage. They are focused on driving transformation in these industries by providing strategic and operational insights, patient capital and access to NABARD’s extensive network. NABVENTURES Limited acts as a Sponsor and Investment Manager of NABVENTURES Fund- I scheme I, a SEBI-registered close-ended Category II Alternate Investments Fund (AIF).
About Prime VP:
Prime Venture Partners is one of India’s leading early-stage venture capital firms, based in Bangalore and led by Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya, and Amit Somani. Over the past 12 years, Prime has invested in more than 50 startups, including WheelsEye, MyGate, Quizizz, PlanetSpark, Dozee, Zuper, Niyo, OTO, Knight Fintech, Finagg, and Navadhan, among others. The firm has successfully exited investments such as Happay (acquired by Cred), Recko (acquired by Stripe), Ezetap (acquired by Razorpay), and the IPO of Tracxn. Prime Venture Partners is often the first institutional investor in category-defining tech startups, supporting them from early-Product Market Fit (PMF) through the growth-stage, and up to their exit or IPO. Prime recently announced their Fifth Fund of $100M
About LNB group:
LNB is a 100-year-old diversified business group with interests in Financial Services, Farming, Agri Supply Chain, Tea Plantations, Renewable Energy, Textiles and Manufacturing. The Group has been participating in the Alternate Investments space, both through Funds and Direct for almost 15 years. Sustainability is an area of focus for LNB. The Group has presence in India, East Africa and Singapore.
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