Kissht To Expand Its Product Offering For Small And Micro Business Owners

Kissht, an instant line of credit platform caters to the lower mass market and small/micro-business segment. Now it has raised 100 crore in its latest investment round led by Trifecta Capital and Northern Arc.

The company has so far raised over 270 crore in equity and over 1,200 crore in debt. In the current round, Trifecta and Northern Arc have each subscribed to 50 crore of non-convertible debentures (NCDs).

The startup will use the funding to expand its presence across India and further make bigger product offerings including credit cards for the owners of small businesses/shops.

As per the company, it will also develop the funds to expand scale of operations, further enhance product offerings, including credit cards for small business/shops and further improve underwriting capabilities to extend credit to new to credit (NTC) segment using AI and machine learning.

Speaking on the funding, Krishnan Vishwanathan, co-founder, Kissht, said, “Our aim at Kissht is to bring instant, hassle-free credit on the back of our self- learning, strong underwriting and collection capabilities paving the way for lower income and small-business owner segments. This funding will further aid our goal of removing financial constraints, expanding our footprint across tier-II centers in India."

With its proprietary risk and underwriting models and proposition built around instant, hassle-free credit for business and consumption, Kissht has funded close to five million transactions on an annualised basis.

Kissht plans to expand its business to 10 million unique borrowers and total transaction-linked credit volume to 10,000 crore in FY23 (3 times higher than FY22).

The company is foretelling overall revenue of over 500 crore and a profit before tax (PBT) of over 50 crore for FY22.

Rahul Khanna, managing partner, Trifecta Capital, “Kissht is catering to a large and untapped opportunity in India today, and has demonstrated leadership in this segment through focused customer acquisition, underwriting prowess, control on credit costs and innovative collection processes".

Trifecta Capital, launched in 2015 with Rs 500-crore fund, is one of the first venture debt funds from India. Trifecta pioneered the venture debt fund model in India, at a time when the concept of venture debt was hardly known in the Indian startup ecosystem. Founded by Rahul Khanna and Nilesh Kothari in 2014, Trifecta Capital invests in sectors such as B2B, consumer services, consumer brands, ecommerce, mobility, edtech, agritech, fintech and healthcare. The firm has through its two ventures debt funds invested more than 1,800 crore in over 70 companies, including nine unicorns and 11 that are on their way to becoming one. Trifecta counts unicorns such as BigBasket, Infra.Market, Cars24, ShareChat and Vedantu as portfolio companies.