Life.SREDA, AT Capital lead Series B investment in Lenddo

DealStreetAsia: Singapore-based fintech VC firms Life.SREDA and AT Capital have led a Series B round in Lenddoa provider of data for credit scoring and online verification. The financial terms of the investment are undisclosed. The company will use the funds for business expansion. Other investors participating in this Series B round were Omidyar NetworkBlumberg Capital and Golden Gate Ventures.

Lenddo is based in Hong Kong and functions as an online platform that helps members utilise social connections to develop creditworthiness and access local financial services, using this data for credit scoring and online verification. It was incepted in 2011 by co-founders Richard Eldridge and Jeff Stewart.

According to Crunchbase data, Lenddo has previously raised two Series A rounds; a $8 million round in May 2012 and a $6 million round in October 2013. The venture maintains offices in New York, the Philippines, India and Colombia.

Eldridge, Lenddo’s co-founder and CEO, commented: “As smartphone and social media penetration in developing countries continues to grow exponentially, the new investment will allow Lenddo to fast track growth into new markets, expand presence in its existing markets and continue to develop new innovative products.”

Arvind Tiku, a director and founder of AT Capital Group, observed that the investment was motivated by how Lenddo was resolving a major business challenge that often served to restrict and inhibit growth in many countries. Tick noted that by providing lenders with risk assessment tools, it enhanced the ability to assess and evaluate the creditworthiness of clients, de-risking the lending process.

Having improved their algorithms since then, and with experience in lending in multiple markets, Lenddo says that it maintains live deployments in more than 10 countries, since opening up its technology to financial service providers in January 2015.

It claims that banks, card issuers, telcos, P2P lenders and other fintech startups involved in financial services are deploying Lenddo to enhance customer service and enhance their risk management across the web and mobile platforms. According to Lenddo, these firms can access financial information about their clients via API’s or a secure dashboard.

Commenting on the investment, Arjuna Costa, an  investment partner at Omidyar Network, said, “Lenddo’s platform addresses a crucial piece in unlocking full financial inclusion to people in emerging markets.”

Costa added, “By using non-traditional data to make thousands of creditworthy consumers discoverable to lenders for the first time, Lenddo is revolutionising the way we reach, assess, and ultimately extend credit to consumers with no formal credit histories in developing markets.”