WestBridge leads $40 million round in Flipkart-backed FinBox to expand B2B digital lending platform

Finbox will choose to be aggressive and chase growth, instead of prioritising profits at this point, Deshpande added.

FinBox, a business to business (B2B) credit infrastructure fintech, has raised $40 million (around Rs 350 crore) in its Series B round led by WestBridge Capital, CEO and co-founder Rajat Deshpande told Moneycontrol.

What will Finbox use the money for?

The company will aim to launch new products and strengthen its AI-driven risk, fraud, and underwriting platforms. FinBox will also use the money to go deeper in the fraud detection space and will foray into secured lending, loan against property, housing loans and more.

What made WestBridge invest in FinBox?

"FinBox has established itself as a product-first platform that addresses critical gaps in India’s credit ecosystem. Their modular architecture, data intelligence, and embedded applications create a strong foundation for scalable digital lending. At WestBridge Capital, we strongly believe FinBox is well positioned towards becoming an integral layer of India’s evolving digital credit infrastructure, and we are excited to partner with them in their next phase of growth” said Deepak Ramineedi, Partner, WestBridge Capital.

Who else is participating in the round?

The round also saw participation from existing investors such A91 Partners and Aditya Birla Ventures.

"We are excited to up our investment in FinBox. They’ve prudently been building the rails for digital lending. This fundraise will help further expand their product suite for banks and NBFCs," Kaushik Anand, Partner, A91 partners, said.

What is the split between primary and secondary capital?

Of the $40 million, $35 million went directly into the company’s coffers in the form of primary capital and the remaining $5 million was through secondary share sales where early angels exited to make way for new investors.

Where will FinBox deploy the capital?

“With the fresh capital, we will accelerate our mission to reimagine digital lending through our AI platform to supercharge the productivity of banks and NBFCs while ensuring borrowers get faster, fairer access to credit,” Deshpande said in the interview.

“We’ll also use the money to scale operations in Southeast Asia, a market we entered recently,” he said.

Inorganic growth ambitions?

Deshpande also said FinBox will actively look at acquiring companies that are building in adjacent sectors.

“If a company is building in a space we’ve been eyeing, we’ll consider inorganic growth opportunities. These will be companies that are valued at around $20-30 million. We can consider even larger ones, we will not shy away from raising more capital to fund these plans,” he said.

FinBox will choose to be aggressive and chase growth, instead of prioritising profits at this point, Deshpande added.

FinBox in a nutshell:

Since its inception in 2017, FinBox’s lending stack has processed over $9 billion, or over Rs 75,000 crore, in loan applications. Its product, FinBox BankConnect, has helped lenders improve approvals by 35 percent and reduce fraud incidence by 54 percent.

Prior to the latest round, the company had raised a total of $16 million as per data available on Tracxn, a private markets data provider.