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South India-based NBFC, IKF Finance, has raised Rs 250 crore in a funding round led by Accion’s Digital Transformation Fund.
Set up in the early 1990s by V G K Prasad, the used vehicle, housing and MSME financier has been backed by MO Alternate Investment Advisors (MO Alts), which invested in the company in 2015. Global impact fund Accion anchored the funding round with Rs 120 crore and rest was raised from other investors, which includes marquee HNI/family offices. The investment has been made from Accion’s Digital Transformation Fund, which focuses on investing in large, scaled financial service providers for growth equity and investment in digital transformation.
Since MO Alts’ investment, IKF has evolved into a multiproduct financier with diverse capabilities across commercial vehicle loans, MSME finance and affordable housing loans. IKF is among the few lending firms to have demonstrated consistent growth and profitability across economic cycles. Despite Covid and other macro headwinds, IKF has generated strong growth of over 40 per cent in the past few years.
Vasumathi Koganti, Promoter and MD of IKF Finance said, “...IKF is Accion’s investment through its Digital Transformation Fund. With over three decades of experience in asset financing, we have built a robust foundation in terms of our geographic presence, diversified product portfolio and customer segments, strong credit and risk assessment framework, well-established systems and processes, and integrated technology platforms.”
“Over the past few years, jointly with our key stakeholder Motilal Oswal Alternates, we have been setting up the building blocks of a massive transformation aimed at delivering best in class growth and profitability on a sustainable basis. We believe that our digital strategy will play a pivotal role in enabling this transformation and along with Accion’s Digital Transformation Fund we will now have the opportunity to leverage the experience that Accion has in creating value for financial institutions in emerging markets through various interventions,” he said.
In 2017, the company incubated a housing financing subsidiary that has grown at a CAGR of over 60 per cent to scale up to Rs 700 crore very quickly. As on March 2023, the firm has a consolidated AUM of Rs 3,200 crore with a network of 200 branches across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
