indifi: Fintech lender Indifi records 120% year-on-year growth in new loan disbursements
“For us, this is a planned milestone as we knew there is a certain scale and performance where we will start becoming profitable,” said Alok Mittal, CEO, Indifi Technologies. “Covid stressed a lot of our customer base, but the performance of our pandemic-impacted portfolio has turned out to be better than what we had estimated. The performance of our post-Covid portfolio is also on track. Our gross NPAs (non-performing assets) now varies below 2%, and the company has grown by around 120% over the past 12 months in terms of new payouts.
The online lending platform said growth in disbursements continued to come on the back of tightened credit criteria and an increase in average ticket size and duration. Since its inception, the lender claims to have disbursed 48,000+ loans in 650+ cities.
Indifi said it recorded its first profitable quarter in Q1 of FY2023. However, the company has not published its profit figures for Q1 FY’23. While revenues for FY21 and FY22 were Rs 65 crore and Rs 105 crore respectively, its annual losses for the two years were Rs 37 crore and Rs 33 crore.
The latest growth was driven by the expansion of partnerships with digital ecosystem partners and by investing in new customer segments, the firm, which was started in 2015, said.
In FY ’22, coming out of Covid, the company had cautiously started accelerating growth and had more than doubled its loan book. The momentum continued into FY ’23, with the lender reporting consecutive months of record disbursement growth in Q1. It further claimed that its assets under management were set to cross ₹1,000 crore in Q2 FY ’23.
To evaluate the creditworthiness of SME borrowers, the fintech lender has recently increased its investment in risk analytics and machine learning capabilities. These investments have also played a role in securing the latest growth milestone for the company, it added.
Aditya Harkauli, Chief Business Officer at Indifi, comments on the latest numbers: “Growth and profitability metrics, together, remain the measures of success for us. Embedded in this approach is the inalienable and self-evident need to calibrate and control credit losses as well.”
