PerkFinance Launches App in Indian languages to Enable Blue-Collar Workers Access Affordable Loans

India’s leading salary-linked personal loan company, PerkFinance, has launched its app in four Indian languages. PerkFinance enables employees of partnering companies to apply for a loan easily. The app is now available in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu and is primarily targeted at blue-collar workers.

Blue-collar workers, who are traditionally not part of the formal banking ecosystem, find it hard to obtain loans from mainstream financial institutions due to the complex documentation involved and their lack of credit history. They also form a large part of the Indian language internet users who are estimated to account for 75% of India’s total internet user base. A study by KPMG and Google found that the Indian language internet user base is growing at a CAGR of 18% and will reach 536 million by 2021.

“We believe that having our app in multiple Indian languages makes our financial products accessible to a larger section of the Indian population including blue-collar workers. Our aim is to make affordable loans available to anyone who has a smartphone. We have partnered with 50+ companies, which together employ more than two lakh people. With the launch of our multilingual app we hope to scale our reach to 15 lakh people by the end of the second quarter of 2019,” said Vivek Kandkur, Co-founder, PerkFinance. 

With easy access to loans, blue-collar workers will no longer need to turn to informal moneylenders who often charge exorbitant interest rates. Since PerkFinance uses the employee-employer relationship for risk assessment, it is able to offer better interest rates and faster processing times.

PerkFinance partners with companies to provide financial wellbeing products like affordable personal loans to their employees at no cost and no risk to the company.  Its financial products improve employee well-being, thereby boosting productivity and reducing attrition. The loans are reported to the credit bureau and improve the borrowers’ credit score. Borrowers can get approval for higher loan amounts and longer tenures at reduced rates of interest, with improved credit.