India's financial technology sector is growing rap idly, fuelled by friendly government policies, a large market base and an innovation driven start up landscape. Through innovative and dynamic use of technology in the lending process, fintech firms are breaking new ground in the finance sector. Fintech ventures use alternative data points and machine learning algorithms, to increase efficiency and provide greater access to credit. One such organization leveraging advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to simplify the process is Rupeelend, a lending platform.

The New Delhi based company was founded by Siddharth Ravindran with an objective to render easy and quick financing solutions to consumers faced with situations such as medical emergencies, wedding funds and education fees apart from other necessities. The fintech startup provides short term credit to consumers and businesses alike with an increased focus on the B2C category. With the help of technology, it also helps banks gain customers frequently while educating consumers about the importance of good credit history.

Ensuring Safe Lending Practices
The platform largely specializes in personal loans, education loans and ‘buy now pay later' loans (a consumer durable loan where customers can buy anything and pay later). It also provides small business loans to support livelihood generation for consumers. This includes funding stitching machines and running small projects such as e-rickshaw funding among others. "We are also planning to launch electronic vehicles loans, starting with two wheeler financing," adds Siddharth. Additionally, Rupeelend provides personal loans to the salaried class. Apart from the aforementioned loans, the platform has an online shopping loan which is similar to `buy now pay later'service.

The startup has tied up with a few companies to render online travel ticket loans, which is a unique concept. Medical loans with a few

hospitals is another service of the fintech company which was started to simplify the loan process through minimum documentation.

Starting from 10,000, rupeeland currently gives out loans up to 5-10 lakhs. The tenure of the loan ranges from 2 months to 5 years

"We have a unique concept," says Siddharth. After the Covid 19 outbreak in India, the team goes to the customer's doorsteps to carryout verifi cations. They conduct KYC at their house or office and click the picture in realtime, which gets validated from the company's backend, to verify their authenticity. After this, Rupeelend tries to render instant loans. Starting from 10,000, the platform currently gives out loans up to 5-10 lakhs. The tenure of the loan ranges from 2 months to 5 years. To ensure customer's privacy, the data is encrypted due to which there is no chance of data leakage.


Witnessing Vertical & Horizontal Growth
Having developed a vast service portfolio, Rupeelend has experienced exponential growth since its foundation in 2014. What started with just eight members has today expanded to become a 200 employee strong company. While client acquisition began in major cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore Rupeelend has expanded to more than 70 cities. The company has witnessed 30-40 per cent growth since its inception. With revenue growth of 60 per cent year on year and a total clientele of 5.6 lakhs, the company has already launched a few more new products.

Going forward, the fintech startup intends to expand its services to provide loans to doctors and will build a system to fund both the supplier as well as the consumer. Its major focus will be to get more customers by building more robust artificial intelligence and machine learning systems.