Indian neobank Fi to launch P2P lending platform
India-based neobank Fi is set to launch a peer-to-peer lending product later this year, as it scales up.
It will work alongside Matrix Partners-funded Liquiloans for the P2P product, and will target returns of nine per cent per year.
Customers will be able to invest from between 10,000 rupees (£105) and 500,000 rupees in Fi’s P2P loans, and they will be allowed to withdraw their investment at any point.
“We will look at products on the lending side over the next 12 months,” said Fi’s co-founder Sujit Narayanan.
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“We are working in close partnership with our banking partners to be able to offer lending lines. We will start off with unsecured products like credit cards, personal loans etc, and then slowly expanded to other categories.”
Narayanan added that the company will create a “tightly managed portfolio” of P2P loans, which will initially be available for only a small base of user.
“Slowly as a highly curated and high credit score kind of a portfolio is made available by Liquiloans, we will slowly start enhancing and providing that as an opportunity for our users,” he said.
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Fi was founded in 2019 by former Google Pay executives Narayanan and Sumit Gwalani. It initially focused on providing banking products in partnership with India’s Federal Bank.
As it scales up, the platform intends to add new products and services to diversify its offering. As well as announcing the launch of the P2P lending platform, Fi has also teamed up with 11 asset management companies to allow customers to invest in mutual funds.
Fi was recently valued at $315m (£255.3m). In November 2021, it raised $50m in a funding round led by B Capital and Falcon Edge Capital. Fi’s other investors include Sequoia India and Ribbit Capital.
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