CredAvenue, a leading enterprise debt marketplace that connects enterprises with lenders and investors, announced the closing of its first funding round of $90 million, led by Sequoia Capital India and co-led by Lightspeed, TVS Capital Funds and Lightrock, among others. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to CredAvenue on the transaction.

Chennai-headquartered CredAvenue is building infrastructure to power debt markets and offers solutions for discovery and execution across a wide range of products. To date, it has facilitated transactions worth $9 billion through the platform, while engaging with over 1,500 institutional borrowers and over 750 investors, touching 1 million end retail borrowers.

The funds raised in this round will be utilised towards expanding product capabilities and ramping up the platform’s technology and data science infrastructure. The company aims to invest heavily in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence over the next few months to significantly improve and expand its product offerings, across each of its sub-platforms. CredAvenue aims to transform from an assisted platform to a completely self-serve one, thereby improving the speed and autonomy of the platform’s users.

CredAvenue, which has been on a hyper-growth trajectory over the last year, comprises over 350 employees spanning across different verticals — technology, sales, marketing, strategy and HR. It expects to double its headcount to 700 by the end of FY22. The company also plans on global expansion and inorganic growth through strategic acquisitions. Gaurav Kumar, founder & CEO, CredAvenue, said, “We are the only enterprise debt platform offering all forms of debt, both in India and globally and this reflects in the scale of business done by our platform since inception. We are building something truly transformational, and we aim to increase the debt to GDP of our country with CredAvenue.”

Combining deep technological innovation with expertise in financial product design, the company is one of the only fintech platforms with deep technology integrations across the top 10 banks and mutual funds in India, representing loan assets worth $1 trillion, which form the core of the financial services establishment in the country. The product stack allows for a high level of interoperability, making CredAvenue a one-stop solution for all debt needs.

Sakshi Chopra, MD, Sequoia India, said, “Gaurav and team are veterans in the industry and we are delighted to partner with them in their vision to deepen the debt markets in India which currently remain underdeveloped at 65% of GDP, well behind the global average of 150%. CredAvenue is a unique solution that not only simplifies access to credit for borrowers ranging from a BB to AA rating but also improves access to multiple debt products like bonds, supply chain financing, etc on a single unified platform. We believe it has the opportunity to become the platform of choice for borrowers and lenders operating in the debt market.”

The company has already achieved market leadership across various debt categories including co-lending, loans and bonds, by simplifying access and servicing and helping consumers seamlessly navigate multiple offerings through a single portal.

Gopal Srinivasan, chairman at TVS Capital Funds, said, “CredAvenue’s platform can provide institutional investors access to larger liquidity pools at market-efficient rates and faster transaction times. Also, with its easy access and the right information, the platform is facilitating larger participation of retail investors in the corporate debt market, which is driving financial inclusion in the fixed income category and is an enabler for the national economic direction in the much-needed deepening of the bond markets in India.”