On Wednesday, DPDzero, a fintech startup, disclosed that it successfully secured $3.25 million in seed funding. Leading this funding round were Blume Ventures and IndiaQuotient, with contributions from notable angel investors including Sunil Gulati and Nikhil Kumar. The company intends to utilize these funds for strategic allocation, product distribution enhancement, product development, and talent acquisition, as per their official statement.
Founded in 2022 by Ananth Shroff and Ranjith Ramachandra, DPDzero is dedicated to addressing delayed repayments and risk management. It achieves this by harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence to analyze patterns, predict, and proactively prevent defaults. Sajith Pai, Partner at Blume Ventures, said,
“At 55% of GDP, India’s credit penetration is far below the global average of 148%. With economic growth, credit is set to rise, further driven by initiatives like AA & OCEN. This will onboard many New To Credit (NTC) customers but there is a risk of increasing NPAs, necessitating a focus on collection. Blume’s thesis on collection tech saw us investigating this space deeply. DPDzero stood out, and the collection product that Ananth and Ranjith have built impressed us. DPDzero has an exciting roadmap for improving the credit landscape and we’re proud to support their journey.”
As per the statement, DPDzero experienced a remarkable 700 percent increase in revenue over a span of just ten months through its AI-driven collections and debt recovery platform. The company has forged partnerships with several non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), including Tata Capital, KreditBee, Cashe, Lazypay, Snapmint, and others. Ananth Shroff, CEO and Co-Founder of DPDzero reveals,
“Our journey is in its early stages, but our commitment to reshape the financial landscape is unwavering. We know lending is hard, but collection is harder. We want to solve the hardest problem first.”
In a written response to the Lok Sabha, MoS Corporate Affairs Inderjeet Singh disclosed that as of April 30, there were 3,085 fintech startups registered with the DPIIT in India.
According to the Invest India platform, the official investment promotion agency of the Indian government, India stands out as one of the world’s most rapidly expanding fintech markets. In 2021, the industry had a market size of $50 billion and is projected to burgeon to $150 billion by 2025. Moreover, the Indian digital lending market, with a value of $270 billion in 2022, is anticipated to reach $350 billion by 2023. Over the period from 2014 to 2022, the Indian fintech sector secured approximately $34 billion in funding.
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