Amid funding ‘winter’, BankBazaar.com to raise $100 million in 3 years: CEO Adhil Shetty
3 min read 10 Aug 2022, 04:18 PM ISTBankBazaar.com anticipates growth of between 80-90% in FY23.
PremiumBankBazaar.com Founder and Chief Executive Officer Adhil Shetty has revealed that the company intends to fund $100 million (about ₹795 crore), which will aid the company in accelerating business expansion over the following three years as it anticipates growth of between 80-90% in FY23.
The fintech company achieved a break-even on a month-to-month basis in March 2022, according to founder and chief executive officer Adhil Shetty, who did not provide a time frame for the fundraising. At this moment, there is no immediate need for money to support expansion.
BankBazaar.com has not achieved break-even on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) level -- measure of a company's overall financial performance.
"This year we are confident that we will grow by 80-90 per cent in terms of topline and we believe that we will end the year with EBITDA profitability. We finished A to D round of fundings till now, the next round will be an E round," Shetty told PTI in an interview.
"We have not finalised the quantum, but it will be of a size somewhere around $100 million. We don't have a stated timeline to raise the funds. We don't need it to deliver the target of 80-90 per cent growth but it will turbo charge our growth in subsequent years, so we don't need it this year," Shetty said.
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Although the financing climate has radically changed from what it was one or two quarters ago, Shetty claimed that "winter has set in" He claimed that low cost client acquisition and having a business with a "high profit margin" powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are the company's main building blocks rather than spending a lot of money on advertising.
Since its founding in 2008 as a platform for loan comparisons, the business has developed into a co-branded credit card issuer with Yes Bank and RBL Bank as the banking partners, in addition to providing credit score services to its clients.
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"We were not able to achieve break-even on a full year basis in FY22, we had a topline of ₹150 crore on an annualised basis. Our aspiration is to be able to achieve it on a full year basis in FY24, obviously the environment is very-very tough. We continue to manage things very closely, wiping off accumulated losses will take time," Shetty said without sharing the data on losses.
The company, which claims to be the largest fintech co-branded credit card issuer with more than 5 crore registered users, is backed by significant foreign investors like WSV, Experian, Eight Roads, Sequoia India, Walden International, and Amazon.
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Talking about credit card usage trends, he said BankBazaar issues co-branded credit cards to only high value customers having credit score of over 700-750 as they understand the importance of timely re-payments and do not have the propensity to default as well.
The platform is also mulling joining the Account Aggregator system soon, Shetty said, adding "it is something which is in very advanced stages".
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It will also help the company, which only offers services to retail customers as of now, to cater to other categories of customers such as MSMEs as data availability will be easier.
"For an MSME loan you need data on, let’s say income tax statement or the GSTN data. Once Account Aggregator makes up...I think a tremendous opportunity will open up for players such as ours to be able to look at MSME in loan space," said the official.
(With PTI inputs)
