Stride Ventures Invests Rs 15 Crores in ZipLoan; Marks First Foray into Fintech Lending

Stride Ventures, one of India’s leading venture debt funds, has led a debt round of INR 15 crores in ZipLoan, a technology-enabled lending platform that provides loans to MSMEs. Through their customized offerings and deep relationships across banks and corporates, Stride aims to be a strategic partner in Ziploan’s journey.

This is Stride’s first foray into Fintech lending and the amount will be disbursed across two tranches. The investment underlines the firm’s commitment to leverage traditional banking capital to cater to the startup ecosystem.

ZipLoan caters to the need of working capital loans for kirana stores and micro industries. Its proprietary ZipScore platform, that tests creditworthiness of a borrower, has so far helped it maintain its non-performing assets (NPA) at under 3%. 

Ishpreet Gandhi, Founder and Managing Partner, Stride Ventures, said “We are excited to partner with ZipLoan in their pursuit to revolutionize lending to small business owners. It is our endeavour at Stride to make credit accessible and efficient as we try to prevent equity dilution and make entrepreneurs truly ‘Atmanirbhar’. The company has exhibited tremendous growth without compromising the quality of the loan book. We are confident that the company will continue to scale even in these challenging times.”

Kshitij Puri, Co-founder & CEO, ZipLoan, added, “We are privileged to partner with Stride Ventures as they help us realise our mission of addressing funding needs of small business owners. The MSME segment is the most important contributor to our economy, but still continues to be credit starved. Even during the current crisis, the MSME segment has shown great resilience demonstrated by strong collections we have had.” 

Stride Ventures launched its maiden fund in 2019 with a target corpus of INR 500 crores and plans to invest in 35-40 startups over the next 3 years.

About Stride Ventures 

Stride Ventures is focused on providing debt solutions to growth stage start-ups. Stride provides tailor-made debt solutions to start-ups, enabling them to strategically allocate capital. Bringing more than six decades of collective underwriting experience, the fund helps its portfolio companies leverage the banking ecosystem through their domain expertise and extensive network.

About ZipLoan

Ziploan is a tech-driven digital lender focused on small ticket business loans. Till date, Ziploan has disbursed approx. INR 400 Cr across 10,000 borrowers. Ziploan is present in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow and Dehradun. Ziploan is addressing the key pain point of small businesses i.e. access to formal credit by customizing the loan sourcing and underwriting process for its target customer base.