Camden Town Technologies led ZestMoney has raised $13.4 million in an extension of its Series-A round. The round helped the company raise a total funding of $22 million which was led by smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi.
The series A funding was led by PayU which had also participated in the current round of funding along with other existing investors — Ribbit Capital and Omidyar Network, reports Financial Express.
The latest round of funding will support its technology and data science capabilities including expanding use cases for the core ZestMoney Affordability Product. The objective is to make it the digital consumer's preferred lifestyle financing solution.
Last year, Bengaluru-based ZestMoney partnered with Xiaomi to co-launch Mi Finance. The platform allowed the Mi customers in India to afford Xiaomi products via cardless EMI.
The start-up, which has three million registered users, is trying to find alternatives in which collecting money can be automated and is even looking at targeted reminder messages to borrowers through Facebook or WhatsApp.
ZestMoney is also associated with other digital consumer partners, including Amazon, Flipkart, UpGrad and Zefo. The company has an aggressive expansion plan for the current year as they plan to enter into travel and healthcare as well as create additional flexible credit products to suit each stage of a user's life.
Lizzie Chapman, co-founder and chief executive, ZestMoney said: "We are very excited to have Xiaomi as a new investor in the company given the success they have had in building digital credit products in China. They have built one of the most loved brands in India and they have a passionately consumer-focused philosophy which deeply resonated with our values as a company."
Presently, ZestMoney has 3 lakh applicants per month and does more than 3 crore transactions per day. It has a very quick loan approval facility with one loan getting approved every 7 seconds ranging from Rs. 129 to Rs. 4 lakh. The company has a target to achieve a run rate of Rs 3,000 crore disbursal by the end of this year.
In order to further reinforce its Artificial Intelligence capabilities, ZestMoney acquired PhotographAI an image-based AI company.
