kaleidofin announces USD 13.8 million equity infusion by Rabo Partnerships and others
Chennai, September 18, 2024: kaleidofin private limited, is a financial services company that is focused on building a digital ecosystem to accelerate access to formal finance to lower income customers and small businesses in the informal sector. The Company today announced that it has received an equity infusion of USD 13.8 million. Rabo Partnerships B.V., headquartered at Netherlands, led the funding round with an investment of USD 11 million. The investment will support Kaleidofin’s mission and help scale its lending portfolio and expand credit scoring, middleware and risk services through selected partnerships. Existing investors Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Oikocredit, Omidyar Network India and Flourish also participated in the round. This takes the total funds raised by kaleidofin since inception to USD 37 million.
Rabo Partnerships, a subsidiary of Rabobank, is present in more than 30 countries and focuses on improving financial inclusion, and food security across emerging markets. The company finds strong synergies in kaleidofin’s tech-led platform in making credit and other financial products accessible to everyone, everywhere. It aims to support kaleidofin’s expansion, particularly for kaleidofin’s lending portfolio and ‘ki score’ led risk infrastructure platform. This will pave the way to transform product design enabling rural and agri-focused lenders including large commercial banks to graduate existing customers to more specialised loans, attract new customers, implement risk-based pricing, and significantly enhance portfolio monitoring.
Sucharita Mukherjee, Co-founder & CEO, kaleidofin said:
“Rabo Partnerships multi-faceted, partnership approach towards promoting financial inclusion, private capital development and food security across the globe has been highly effective in fostering innovation and growth. We believe that kaleidofin’s understanding of the Indian rural economy, where 61% of individuals are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, and Rabo Partnerships’ focus on the agri sector will further strengthen our capabilities in serving the customer, underwriting the customer and in offering customers and small businesses more suitable loans in the agri segment.”
“We are very pleased to support Kaleidofin’s mission to offer innovative financial solutions”
Marianne Schoemaker, CEO, Rabo Partnerships said:
“We are very pleased to support Kaleidofin’s mission to offer innovative financial solutions, targeting millions of customers who lack convenient access to formal financial services. They have established themselves in India as a leading player in credit scoring and risk services, predominantly targeting women, small entrepreneurs and the agricultural segment. This investment seamlessly supports our strategy of promoting data-driven finance solutions through local institutions and service providers. We aim to leverage our ecosystem approach through value creation and impact, and we are looking forward to a fruitful long-term partnership with Kaleidofin.”
Established in 2017, kaleidofin is a financial services platform with a mission to build a digital financial ecosystem for everyone, everywhere. kaleidofin provides financial solutions for low-income customers/businesses working in the informal economy via the kaleidofin platform. By combining credit health assessment (ki score), middleware rails, risk management dashboards (ki view) and debt capital markets structuring capabilities (ki credit), kaleidofin unlocks finance for informal sector customers from banks and other deep pools of capital.
In India, the Company has facilitated loan disbursal of cumulatively over USD 2.7 billion for over 4.7 million customers and small enterprises working in the informal economy, since 2020. By building underwriting standards for impactful finance, innovating on debt structures that scale inclusion, kaleidofin is taking an ecosystem approach to delivering financial inclusion via its platform, especially focused on women, agriculture, nano entrepreneurs and youth in emerging market economies.
Prior to this, kaleidofin had raised a total of USD 23 million from marquee investors like Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Omidyar Network India, Oikocredit, Blume Ventures, Bharat Fund, and Flourish Ventures.