Merak Ventures, a sector-agnostic early-stage venture capital (VC) firm, has announced its fourth significant investment this year, participating in a $1.25Mn (~INR 10 CR) round in AbleCredit, an AI credit underwriting company. The seed round was led by Merak Ventures, with participation from Venture Catalysts and Helios Holdings (Suraj Nalin).
There is a credit gap of INR 25 trillion[1] in India alone, which is mostly caused by a shortage of qualified underwriters and an overall high underwriting cost. Using cutting edge AI products and solutions, AbleCredit is on a mission to close the credit gap in emerging nations. The startup is developing Generative AI models with voice, vision and language capabilities, that function like a AI Assistant to the Credit Team and can generate comprehensive credit reports on a case to case basis, while adhering to the Credit Policy and guidelines. Owing to its unique voice and vision capabilities, AbleCredit’s model can be used even in the informal sector, which forms a bulk of new-to-credit customers, and is extremely data scarce. With this model, AbleCredit has effectively increased underwriting speed by over 20x and decreased underwriting costs by enhancing the throughput of credit processes by 12x.
The investment from Merak Ventures will enable the startup to scale its AI operations, along with business growth and expansion.
Manu Rikhye, Partner at Merak Ventures, said, “Credit underwriting, historically a time-consuming process in loan disbursement, is ripe for transformation with recent advancements in AI. AbleCredit’s innovative tools promise unprecedented speed and efficiency in underwriting, empowering companies to make decisions faster and more effectively. At Merak Ventures, we are committed to championing such impactful solutions for real-world challenges.”
Utkarsh Apoorva, Harshad Saykhedkar, Ashwini Prabhu, and Anubhab Bandyopadhyay form the dynamic co-founding team behind AbleCredit, each contributing a unique skill set. Utkarsh, the CEO, boasts a track record as a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded successful ventures like Reshamandi, Guitarstreet, and Edulabs. Harshad, as Chief AI Officer, brings over 13 years of expertise to the table. Meanwhile, Ashwini serves as the CPO, and Anubhab as the CTO, leveraging their collective experience in developing products for both major corporations such as HDFC, Kotak, ICICI, and Ujjivan, as well as for small-scale cottage industries.
“Emerging economies are facing a significant credit gap in the MSME sector, leading to unemployment and economic barriers. At AbleCredit, our AI system leverages voice, vision, and language capabilities to extend credit analysis into traditionally overlooked sectors. This approach enables us to serve a wide range of industries by analysing alternative data sources to produce comprehensive credit assessments. We’re thrilled to announce our new funding round and to welcome Merak Ventures, who support our mission to bridge economic disparities and enhance financial well-being.” said Utkarsh Apoorva, Cofounder and CEO of AbleCredit.
AbleCredit currently focuses on both secured and unsecured segments. By utilizing advances in artificial intelligence, the startup hopes to provide small businesses with loans in under a minute in the near future. Its ambitious goal is to process one million loan applications over the course of the next 12 months.
About Merak Ventures:
Merak Ventures is a sector-agnostic, early-stage venture fund investing in companies that are solving real problems and creating large-scale impact in the B2B and emerging technologies sectors. With a decade of experience in the Indian ecosystem, Merak Ventures is managed by experienced operators and investors, Manu Rikhye and Sheetal Bahl, who bring over 20 years of experience each to the table. For more information, please visit https://merakventures.com/
