Manisha Bansal Talks About the i2ifunding's Start-up and its Growth
One of the prominent peer to peer lending platform i2ifunding.com, began its operations in October, 2015. Company is revolutionizing how personal loans are taken in India. It is founded by a Jodhpur girl, Manisha (Chowdhary) Bansal, who did her schooling and CA from Jodhpur.
Her entrepreneurial journey started from her college days when she helped her father, Prof. S.L. Chowdhary (retired from MBM Engineering College, Jodhpur) in expanding the presence of Jodhpur Computer Services (JCS). Along with Manisha other co-founders are from India’s top business schools including IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta.
While talking to us about their startup venture, Manisha says, “Our vision is to make i2ifunding the most trusted P2P platform in India where borrowers can get hassle free personal loans at lower rates and investors can earn higher return on their investment. The personal loan can be used for multiple purposes which include purchase of consumer durable, debt consolidation (i.e. repayment of credit card debt etc.), medical expenses, education expenses, Marriage expenses etc.”
The complete process is transparent, quick and easy. Borrowers needs to register on the company website and then second step is to share all required documents for Credit Risk Evaluation. i2ifunding uses its proprietary credit risk algorithm to evaluate risk. Based on the results of the risk evaluation, a benchmark interest rate is assigned to the borrower.
On the other hand, the investors who are registered on the platform can browse through borrower profile and fund part of the loan request. The benefit for Investors is that they not only have an opportunity to earn higher returns but also diversify their risk by investing small amounts in multiple loan requests.
i2ifunding provides investors an opportunity to invest in loan requests of retail borrowers with interest rates as high as 30%. Its ease of use enables an investor to fund a loan project in a few simple steps. Users are also equipped with the ability to view and download detailed account statements, transaction analysis and many more features.
The company puts a great effort into maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of the details shared with them.Their credit risk score model takes into consideration 50+ parameters to analyze each loan ensuring that each loan has been properly evaluated before being listed. Company has distributed loans of around 1 Cr and does not have a single default till date.
Adding to the long list of features, Manisha says: “To mitigate biggest concerns of retail investors Investor protection reserve has been created to provide protection on part of principal amount lent. Depending on the risk category of the loan, 100% to 50% of principal amount will be refunded by i2i to investors in case of any default.”
Company is creating lot of interest in metros and as part of their expansion plan have now started giving loans in more than 50 cities in India including Jodhpur, Jaipur, Bikaner, Kota etc in Rajasthan.
Company also raised angel investment of 2 crore in May 2016. There is a huge market for P2P loans, keeping the same thing in mind, this startup is attracting investors by making sure that only high quality loans are posted at right interest rate after thorough risk assessment. Their focus is to continue to strengthen their analytics based risk assessment model so that it is more robust and analyzes all the data imprints created by borrower including behavioral analytics on social media in more detailed manner.
