Capital Float Acquires Personal Finance Management Company Walnut

Capital Float (Capfloat Financial Services Private Limited), the largest digital lender in India, has acquired Pune-based Walnut (Thumbworks Technologies Pvt Ltd), makers of the country’s leading personal financial management (PFM) app, in a deal amounting to $30 million. The acquisition follows shortly after Capital Float announced its foray into the Consumer Finance vertical, emphasising a strong strategic focus on leveraging this lucrative borrower segment.

Walnut is a personal finance management mobile app that helps users to automatically track spends, bank and card balances, bill payments, and split expenses within a group, in just a few clicks. With a simple and user-friendly mobile experience, Walnut enables individuals to effortlessly manage their finances. Walnut has over 7 million downloads on the Play Store, an average rating of 4.4/5 and is featured in Google Editor’s Choice list of Top 5 Financial applications.

In July 2017, Walnut launched “Walnut Prime”, an instant credit line that users can access on the app anywhere, anytime. This small ticket app-based credit line is centred on Walnut’s “Prime Credit Score”. While a traditional bureau score is derived basis existing loan and credit card repayment behaviour, the Prime Credit Score takes into consideration an alternate data range that includes one’s income, purchase behaviour, earning capacity and security savings. The data range also incorporates newer forms of consumption such as e-commerce, wallet, shopping, food, bills etc. giving an in-depth insight into the consumer’s behaviour, thereby enabling risk evaluation at granular levels. This unique proposition offers consumers with no credit exposure and no behaviour data, an easy access to credit, besides supporting the financial inclusion through digitalization. Walnut recently crossed INR 100 crores in loans to users on its mobile app.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Walnut, an accomplished member of the Fintech ecosystem. Our sensibilities and objectives aligned with theirs, which largely paved the way for our decision to join hands with the company. We were extremely impressed with the team and the product Patan and Amit have built. Their approach towards leveraging technology to solve financial concerns of the common individual was particularly impressive, and we eagerly look forward to working closely with them. Walnut Prime is a product of deep interest to us, and it will essentially become a new addition to our stable of exceptional, customized credit products,” said Sashank Rishyasringa and Gaurav Hinduja, co-founders of Capital Float.

“Since we launched Walnut, we have been focused on simplifying personal finance for our users. We’re excited to partner with Capital Float as we aim to exponentially grow and bring Walnut and its intuitive features to millions of more Indians. We believe having Capital Float on our side opens up an immense set of opportunities by leveraging their strength in online lending and financial products with our innovative approach to consumer experiences.”, said Patanjali Somayaji and Amit Bhor, co-founders of Walnut.