ZestMoney

ZestMoney is an Indian fin-tech company that specialises in consumer lending. The company is based out of Bangalore and was launched in 2016. Founded by Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma and Ashish Anantharaman, ZestMoney is a technology driven and completely digital lending platform.
In India, there are currently over 300 million households who do not have access to credit cards or any other formal financing options because of insufficient credit history. ZestMoney aims to enable them with access to credit. As of March 2019, the company claims to have 5 million consumers on its platform.
History
Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma and Ashish Anantharaman started researching about financial services and lending industry in India around August 2015. During this time, they faced a chicken-and-egg problem, which was 'You need a loan to get a score, and you needed a score to get a loan'. That’s when they saw an opportunity in tapping over a huge market who didn’t have access to financing options because of insufficient credit history.
The trio theorised a frictionless, completely digital and automated system, one where consumers weren’t required to have a credit score, visit the premises of the financial organisation or complete any paperwork to avail a small ticket consumer loan. They started working on building the platform and establishing merchant partnerships in September 2015. They nicknamed the product as ZestMoney - the name originating from one of the characteristics of the product, which is quick approvals, and the nature of the industry they were in - money lending.
In January 2016, ZestMoney was officially launched with Overcart as its first merchant partner.
Product & Services
ZestMoney has built a platform that enables instant approval and disbursal of small ticket loans. The company says it has built its platform around an AI-based machine learning decision engine. ZestMoney basically builds a risk profile for every consumer who applies for a loan on its platform. They say they’ve built an automated and highly sophisticated decision engine, rely on technology and make use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a risk profile for a potential borrower. For new-to-credit customers, where there is no formal credit bureau data, the company asks such borrowers to submit additional data points for their engine to analyse and provide a loan.
Consumer Loans & Personal Loans
Once a user signs up on ZestMoney, the company will assess the risk of that consumer in real time and then provide a ‘credit limit’, which can be used by the consumer across any of their partner merchants to make their purchase. The availed loan amount can then be paid back in flexible EMIs. ZestMoney also has a cash based personal loan product. However, it is available only to those users who have a good repayment behaviour with the platform. The consumers can avail the personal loan and then pay back in EMIs with tenure of their choice.
ZestMoney is a cardless EMI partner for Amazon, Flipkart, Xiaomi and a few other merchants in India. It is also one of the cardless EMI options accepted by some payment gateways in the country.
Funding
ZestMoney has raised about $22 million till date in three financing rounds and is backed by global investors such as Xiaomi, PayU, Ribbit Capital, Naspers Fintech and Omidyar Networks. In January 2019, the company had announced that it has raised an undisclosed investment from venture debt fund Alteria Capital.

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