Fintech startup, EarlySalary, announced that it has raised Rs 100 crore in a Series B funding round led by Eight Roads Ventures India. Other participants included existing investors IDG Ventures, DHFL, and seed investor Ashok Agarwal.

The Pune based startup was co-founded by Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal and offers cash loans for time period ranging from 7 days to 30 days and amounts ranging from Rs 8000 to Rs 2 lakh. The company evaluates a number of variables like social media scoring prior to sanctioning a loan to a prospective candidate. The loan is then disbursed directly to the person’s bank account. The borrower can then repay the loan within the next few days at an interest rate of around 2 per cent per month.

“We have been able to offer access to short term loans to young working professionals, who don’t have credit bureau rating. We use social algorithm and artificial machine intelligence for risk assessment. Deploying machine learning has helped us in faster loan approvals,” he added.

The company is currently targeting young professionals in the 22-30 age groups. In May 2017, the company also raised Rs 27 crore ($4 million) in funding from IDG Ventures India and DHFL, bringing the total funding raised till date to $20.5 million.

“We will use the funding to accelerate our growth. By end of the year, we are aiming at 100,000 loan disbursements per month (from about 14000 loans a month now),” said Akshay Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO of EarlySalary said. He went on to add that the company has not only been gaining popularity in cities like Pune and Bengaluru but also in smaller cities like Mysore as well.

The company will also employ the funds to upgrade its existing technology as well as to improve its machine learning systems for better and more prudent risk management. The company plans to develop additional products and provide tenure options to customers. Additionally, the company is aiming to automate around 90% of its processes by next year, so that customers applying on the platform can get their loans approved and disbursed instantly.

Mehrotra also said that the company expects to attain profitability by the end of the year.“The key to our success will be helping more and more people without any human interface. Right now, we are about 70 per cent automated and we want to take this to 90-95 per cent,” he was quoted saying.

As a part of the agreement, Dhyanesh Shah, Principal at Eight Roads Ventures will be joining the board of EarlySalary. “The company has cleverly leveraged data and technology to provide instant affordable loans to an otherwise excluded customer segment. We look forward to working closely with Akshay, Ashish and the management team at EarlySalary,” Dhyanesh Shah said.

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