The online lending startup, Avail Finance, announced that it has raised $17.2 million (approximately Rs 112 crore) in Series A round of funding led by venture capital firm, Matrix Partners. The funding round also saw participation from prominent investors including Ankit Bhatia and Bhavish Aggarwal from Ola, FreeCharge Founder Kunal Shah, Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal and Mswipe Founder Manish Patel. The funds were raised as a mix of equity and debt from banks and other non banking finance corporations (NBFC).

Avail Finance was co-founded around a year ago by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta.The startup caters to customers who work as office boys, cleaning staff and do other blue collar jobs in big companies, who are otherwise unable to borrow from banks. The startup disburses loan amounts in the range of Rs 5000 – Rs 60,000, for an average tenure of eight months. It has collaborated with more than a dozen corporate entities to source its prospective borrowers. The employees of these partner companies can download the online NBFC’s app and apply for a short-term personal loan by filling in the required details and uploading the relevant documentation.

“We plan to be able to disburse loans at the click of a button and make our decision-making process quicker. For that we will need to strengthen the platform with our fresh funds,” said Ankush Aggarwal, CEO, Avail Finance. “We have a net outstanding of around Rs 5 crore since February last year when we went live and have disbursed 4,000 loans so far,” he added.

Additionally, Ankush Aggarwal stated that in order to ensure that the borrowers diligently repay their loan, the company either deducts the amount from the borrower’s salary or ensures that the auto debit facility has been activated so that the amount may be debited as soon as the month’s salary is deposited in the bank account.

“Most of these borrowers have no credit history. Hence, we rely on data around their professional history, family background, bank account details, salary, and incentive structure to decide on the amount to lend,” said Ankush Aggarwal.

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