Navi among top fintech lending apps within 3 months of launch: Sachin Bansal

Navi Technologies has emerged as one of the leading fintech lending applications in the country within three months of its launch, claimed cofounder Sachin Bansal during a session at the Global Fintech Fest on July 23. He was speaking with Sequoia Capital Managing Director Rajan Anandan at the fest.

Bansal, who has cofounded Navi with his IIT-Delhi batchmate Ankit Agarwal, intends to scale it up into a full-fledged financial services platform offering loans, insurance and mutual funds. The only sector he is not interested to foray into is payments, where he would like to explore partnerships with existing players.

The former Flipkart co-founder publicly announced the launch of a lending application in June in the middle of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic. Seizing the massive demand in the country, he has secured pole position among all major fintech lending applications.

Within a short period, Navi has emerged as a supplier of credit to a large section of the population and Bansal is confident of his credit appraisal process, which ensures he will be able to control the asset quality within the set target as well.

Navi offers unsecured personal loans up to Rs 5 lakh for a tenure of one to two years.

Bansal exited Flipkart, one of the country’s largest e-commerce players, in 2018 and has bet a large part of his personal wealth on this new venture. Laying out the roadmap, he said he has acquired a non-banking finance company (NBFC) which has a large microfinance business, a general insurance company and acquired Essel Mutual Fund.

Navi has identified the middle income group consumers as the sweet spot for business and intends to offer them a great financial services experience through a digital lending process. Bansal believes that banks have not been able to offer a great experience to middle income consumers because of cost considerations. By taking the process digital, Navi hopes to simplify and reduce cost of operations.

With regards to insurance, Bansal said his hypothesis is based on an understanding of massive market opportunity and lack of good service providers. He intends to radically simplify insurance for consumers.

Commenting on the need for more startups in the banking and financial services space, he said the government should relax the criteria for licences so that more young entrepreneurs can enter the space.

Speaking on his plans to grow the business, Bansal clarified that he will be looking out for both organic as well as inorganic opportunities to grow his business.