Fintech start-up DPDzero has raised $3.25 million in seed funding, with participation from Blume Ventures and IndiaQuotient.
The round also saw participation from banking and fintech leaders, including Sunil Gulati and Nikhil Kumar. “Our journey is in its early stages, but our commitment to reshaping the financial landscape is unwavering. We know lending is hard, but collection is harder. We want to solve the hardest problem first,” said Ananth Shroff, CEO and co-founder of DPDzero.
The funds will be primarily used to enhance product development and distribution, and assemble a team to achieve the company’s objectives, a media release stated.
The start-up was founded in March 2022 with the aim of fixing the root cause of delayed repayments; it says it has witnessed a significant growth in revenue from its AI-powered collections and debt recovery platform. Additionally, it has partnered with non-banking financial companies like Tata Capital, KreditBee, Cashe, Lazypay, and Snapmint, and attracted interest from top private banks.
“At 55 per cent of GDP, India’s credit penetration is far below the global average of 148 per cent. With economic growth, credit is set to rise, further driven by initiatives like AA [account aggregator] and OCEN [Open Credit Enablement Network]. The start-up has an exciting roadmap for improving the credit landscape, and we’re proud to support their journey,” said Sajith Pai, Partner at Blume Ventures.
According to Nikhil Kumar, co-founder of account aggregator gateway Setu, with strong tailwinds from the India stack scale-up, adding the next 200 million people to formal credit could be sooner than expected. Risk and collections will go through massive innovation, and DPDzero is in the best position to take advantage.