India's largest marketplace for financial products Paisabazaar.com announced today that it has become the country's first independent digital platform to reach an annualized loan disbursal rate of USD 1 billion.
Since its inception in February 2014, Paisabazaar.com has witnessed 150X growth and is the clear marketplace leader for lending products, according to industry estimates.
Unsecured loans, which include personal loans and business loans, form the majority share of the disbursals taking place through the Paisabazaar platform. Currently, Paisabazaar.com disburses ~Rs. 480 crore of unsecured loans every month, with a dominant share of these loans going to salaried prime customers, who have an in-hand monthly income of over Rs. 25,000 and credit score more than 750.
"The milestone of reaching USD 1 billion run-rate is significant because it shows the size of the Indian lending market. If one looks at unsecured loans alone, even at such high volumes that Paisabazaar is doing, we are only 2% of the unsecured lending market. Over the next 3-4 years, our aim is to reach 10% of this market," said Naveen Kukreja, CEO & Co-founder, Paisabazaar.com.
In terms of age distribution, 66% borrowers on the Paisabazaar platform were 35 or below years of age, signifying a young customer base which is choosing digital to get access to credit.
Paisabazaar.com partners with more than 90 banks and financial institutions, which include India's biggest public and private banks, NBFCs, digital lenders and mutual fund companies, to offer more than 300 products that cater to all personal finance needs of its consumers.
"We congratulate Paisabazaar.com on achieving this milestone in such a short time. This collaboration has allowed YES BANK to provide better services to the customers and ensured faster and simpler lending opportunities via data-driven digital solutions. The Bank looks forward to many such achievements through this partnership," said Rajan Pental, Senior Group President and Group Head, Branch and Retail Banking, YES BANK.
Growth fueled by Mobile & consumer demand from Tier II and III cities
Currently, Paisabazaar.com receives more than 2 million product enquiries every month from over 1100 cities and towns across India. According to Paisabazaar.com, one of the biggest reasons behind its growth is its success in establishing itself as a consumer brand, across India, which can be attributed to its continuous efforts in spreading awareness around financial products, through TV and digital over the last 4 years.
The popularity of the smartphones has also been a game-changer for digital platforms, with more and more incremental traffic coming from smaller cities and towns through mobile. Paisabazaar.com today gets ~86% of its 23 million+ monthly traffic through mobile, as compared to 59% in April, 2017.
Paisabazaar.com has also witnessed a big surge in demand for credit products from Tier II and III cities, signifying the increase in popularity of the digital channels in accessing credit in the smaller cities. Loans from outside the Top 10* cities today contribute ~41% of the total disbursals through Paisabazaar.com. Two years ago, only 18% of the loans were disbursed to locations outside the Top 10 cities.
Focus areas in 2019
1. Lending to the MSME sector: One of its key focus segments in 2019 for Paisabazaar.com will also be the self-employed, that has steadily shifted to digital channels for its credit needs due to the ease in processes. It currently works with over 25 banks and financial institutions to facilitate easy access to credit to the MSME sector through digital innovations.
"Paisabazaar.com, has been a great enabler in providing easy lending solutions to the massive self-employed segment in India. We congratulate Paisabazaar.com on this big milestone and look forward to working with them more closely this year to further ease the access to credit for the MSME sector. We hope, together, we will continue to empower the MSME community of our country and make financial services available to them at their fingertips," said Harshvardhan Lunia, CEO & Co-founder,Lendingkart Technologies.
2. Customized lending solutions: Paisabazaar.com has been focusing on bringing in industry first innovations, through data and technology, to simplify lending for partners and customers on its platform. Last year, it launched India's first 'Chance of Approval' feature, where each customer, applying for a loan or a credit card on the platform, is shown his chances of approval against each available product. Paisabazaar.com has used 4 years of data to create this advanced predictive algorithm. It has already led to an increase of 21% in the approval rates for lending products on the Paisabazaar platform in 5 months.
Paisabazaar.com is also working with multiple lending partners to simplify the lending process, making it more digital, seamless and faster for the consumer. This year the focus will be on building tailor-made lending solutions to each borrower visiting its platform.
"Our partnership with Paisabazaar.com has enabled us to provide quick, easy and seamless access to loans to varied customer segments on the Paisabazaar platform, through industry-first innovations, backed by deep analytics and cutting edge technology integration. One of them is our pre-approved personal loan offer to customers on the Paisabazaar platform, with no income documents required, which provides almost instant access to credit with minimum effort," said Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, CLIX Capital.
3. Innovating on Free Credit Score: Paisabazaar.com runs India's biggest credit awareness initiative by offering customers their free credit report with monthly updates for life from multiple credit bureaus, like CIBIL and Experian. Last year, Paisabazaar.com made the free credit report product available on multiple new platforms through multiple partnerships and integrations.
Today, a customer can find out his credit score in less than 2 minutes from Paisabazaar through his mobile, an AI-enabled chatbot, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. He can then track his score seamlessly, as he is provided his monthly credit report on WhatsApp.
"We are trying to create an entire ecosystem around our credit score product, using AI and other technologies, to help customers get access to the best and most-suited financial products," said Naveen Kukreja.
4. Affordable housing: Paisabazaar has also been an enabler in providing the most suited home loan deals to customers from varied income segments. Along with sourcing the some of the biggest online home loan deals for HNIs, including a Rs. 6.12 crore loan in May last year, it has also facilitated housing loans to customers from lower income groups through exclusive affordable housing loan partnerships with IIFL, YES Bank, Cholamandalam Finance etc.
Paisabazaar.com says, this year, it will have special focus on technology and data, along with strengthening its partnerships across the financial ecosystem to make personal finance decisions more convenient for customers. It is already working with Microsoft on several industry-first innovations.
"As a market leader, we want to provide our consumers an international experience on Paisabazaar.com. We are benchmarking against the highest global standards to deliver a consumer experience, that's so far unprecedented in India," said Naveen Kukreja.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
