India’s MoneyView is in talks to raise a new round of funding through a unicorn review, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch in a bid to boost the local fintech community amid tighter guidelines from the central bank and recent months of funding woes.
Apis Partners is looking to lead a funding round of $125 million to $150 million at a valuation of $1 billion in the Bengaluru-headquartered startup, the sources said. The round, Series E, has not been completed, so the terms of the deal could still change, the sources cautioned, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is not public.
Apis Partners, Money View and the startup’s founders did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday night local time.
The eight-year-old startup, which raised $615 million in a Series D funding round in March, provides loans to individuals who cannot get loans from banks and other financial institutions. The startup has previously said that most of its customers live in small towns and cities in India.
“India is one of the most underserved large economies in terms of access to credit. “More than 70% of the credit given by banks goes to the richest 10% of Indians,” he says on his website.
“The most underserved classes are people with less than 5L income [$6,070] one year. Money View aims to address this credit gap by providing personalized loan offers to its customers through its robust data and risk assessment model. The company’s proprietary data models provide a 360-degree risk assessment, which enables credit for unexpected segments.”
Money View — which counts Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and Accel among its backers — has been profitable for more than a year, founder Puneet Agarwal said in a press release in May, and was on pace to increase annual revenue growth. 80 million dollars.
“In the era of money-burning business, we are very few fintech startups that have been profitable for more than a year,” Agawal said in a press release in May.
The new funding discussion comes at a time when flows in South Asian markets have slowed significantly as investors look to write new checks and review their underwriting models.
Indian startups raised $3 billion in the quarter ended in September, down 57% from the previous quarter and 80% year-over-year, according to market data platform Tracxn.
