Spice Digital Limited, the subsidiary of Spice Mobility Ltd has entered into an agreement to invest upto Rs 25cr in Luharia Technologies Pvt Ltd which runs the peer to peer lending platform anytime loan.in (ATL). Speaking on the occasion, Dilip Modi, Chairman of Spice Mobility Ltd said “This is another step in the direction of Spice Mobility transforming itself into a digital services company. As part of the digital strategy, fintech will be one of our core areas of growth. Given the lack of access of formal credit to a significant part of the population, we believe that new age digital platforms can help bridge this gap, bringing a larger population base into the formal financial economy.
ATL has emonstrated good initial traction in this space, and we are excited to partner with them to accelerate our goal of financial inclusion” Spice Mobility runs Spice Money, a fintech business enabling the last mile banking infrastructure, bringing financial services to neighbourhood of the underserved society. With its Cloud based “Internet of Services Model” (IoS), using cutting edge technologies, it has rapidly reached all states, creating a network of 40,000 agents. “Strategic partnership with ATL will enable us to offer loan products tailor made for our customer segment”, said Saket Agarwal, CEO of Spice Money.
ATL is a leading platform in the peer to peer (P2P) lending space having disbursed loans worth Rs 47 crores. Through his personal life experience, the founder KK Jain realised that money is valuable only when its needed, and becomes worthless if it reaches when the need dies. With the dream to solve this problem, he along with Neha Jain founded ATL enabling instant loans 24×7 by leveraging its proprietary algorithm. ATL offers personal and business loans to the borrowers using alternative data like digital social profiles, facial recognition, psychometric testing, etc which has enabled it to keep default rates substantially low.
Speaking on this occasion, K.K. Jain said “I am excited to create a leadership position in the alternative lending space in partnership with Spice. ATL will derive a huge strategic advantage from this investment by Spice, by enabling us to leverage Spice Money’s strong network”. Anytime loan is among the few chosen startups to participate in UberExchange, a startup mentoring program run by Uber. Realising the potential of P2P lending, RBI on 4th October, 2017 has come out with guidelines to regulate this sector.