ZestMoney Raises $13.4 Mn From Xiaomi and existing investors

PayU, Ribbit Capital and Omidyar Network participate in extended Series A round

Digital lending startup ZestMoney has raised $13.4 million in an extended Series A round of funding led by Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. Existing investors PayU, Ribbit Capital and Omidyar Network also participated in the round.

The company plans to use the funds to strengthen its technology and data science capabilities and expand use cases for the core ZestMoney Affordability Product to make it the digital consumer’s preferred lifestyle financing solution. It plans to expand into the travel and healthcare verticals and create more credit products.

Priya Sharma, Lizzie Chapman and Ashish Anantharaman - founders of ZestMoney

ZestMoney was founded in in 2015 by Lizzie Chapman, a former Goldman Sachs executive, Priya Sharma (CFO & COO), a former associate with Merill Lynch, and Ashish Anantharaman (CTO). The three founders had started Wonga.com, before they started ZestMoney.

“Xiaomi has built one of the most loved brands in India and they have a passionately consumer-focused philosophy which deeply resonated with our values as a company,” said Lizzie Chapman, co-founder, ZestMoney, in a statement by the company.

ZestMoney had raised $2 million in seed funding in September 2015. In February 2017, PayU had led the Series A round of $6.5 million. It was reported in early April this year, that Xiaomi was in advanced stages to pick up a stake in ZestMoney. ZestMoney and Xiaomi had together launched Mi Finance in 2017 to enable buying of Xiaomi products through card-less EMIs.

The startup, which is operated by Camdem Town Technologies Pvt Ltd, is valued at $22 million, according to a sttement by the company.

ZestMoney offers enrollment and real-time approval process, integrated with the ecommerce check-out process, so that users can avail equated monthly instalments (EMIs) to make card-less purchases. The company already works with Amazon, Flipkart, UpGrad and Zefo. ZestMoney sources data from credit information bureaus and other sources to limit its risk exposure.

Very recently, ZestMoney had acquired PhotographAI, for improving the customer experience around onboarding and filling forms. The company claims to get close to 3 lakh applications per month and disburse more than Rs 3 crores a day. It aims to reach Rs 3,000 crores a day in disbursals by December 2018.

In October 2017, Xiaomi had invested $8 million in KrazyBee, a student credit platform. Xiaomi plans to invest $1 billion in 100 Indian startups over the next five years. India constitutes Xiaomi’s second largest market after China.