Cloud-based lending software provider Lentra has raised $60 million in fresh funding led by existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and the Susquehanna International Group (SIG) Venture Capital. Citi Ventures also participated in the round. The company said it would use the capital to expand into international markets, for acquisitions and for product enhancement.

The Pune-based company is expected to enter Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines by March next year and have an international presence across five geographies outside India by the end of 2023. It will also focus on acquisitions to improve its data and statistical engines, as well as add payment processing capabilities to improve collections on its stack. The company is expected to scout for acquisitions in the robotic process automation sector to further automate processes including documentation for loan applications.

Founded in 2018, Lentra is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider that helps banks and credit financial institutions to further digitise credit disbursals and help them in various aspects of loan servicing, including know-your-customer (KYC) compliance, servicing and collections. Nearly three-fourths of Lentra’s revenue come from loan originations. It also provides banks and financial institutions with early signalling on defaults and bad debt and undertakes portfolio scrubs to determine the health of their loan portfolio.

“With this fundraise, we have a fairly large war-chest and will look at opportunities to buy out talent as well as to revamp our systems, in a bid to better cater to our customers,” founder and chief executive D Venkatesh said. The company clocked revenues of Rs 80 crore (or roughly $10 million) for FY22, Venkatesh said. It looks to end the ongoing fiscal year with revenue of Rs 180 crore (about $22 million).

With the geographical expansion, the company expects almost half of its overall revenue to come from non-Indian markets by the end of 2024. With the funding, Lentra is also expected to bolster its headcount across core engineering functions and take its overall team size to 700 from 500 currently. Starting next year, Lentra is also expected to enter the performance analytics space to help banking partners understand conversions of their various loan products.

“Lentra is empowering lenders to fuel the dreams of millions with effective financial inclusion and credit decisioning. We were really impressed with the combination of their technology prowess and the commercial advantage that Lentra is delivering to their clients,” said Vishal Gupta, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Lentra works with over 50 banking partners and financial institutions in India, and its platform processes more than three million loan applications every month. Since inception, Lentra has processed more than 13 billion transactions and $21 billion worth of loans through its platform.

“Lentra is our first fintech investment in India, and we are very excited about the team’s ability to develop and scale low-friction software solutions for lenders. As a global bank, we look forward to Lentra scaling their products and platform internationally,” said Everett Leonidas, director & APAC lead investor for Citi Ventures. In June, Lentra acquired Chennai-based artificial intelligence startup TheDataTeam (TDT). It is expected to deploy TDT’s customer intelligence platform, Cadenz, to help clients make data-driven decisions relating to customers’ creditworthiness.