Bengaluru-based student microlending startup Buddy has raised $500,000 (Rs 3.4 crore) from venture capital firm Blume Ventures, data analytics company Tracxn Labs and a few angel investors.
Buddy which has partnerships with online retailers such as Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal enables college students to borrow money and purchase products through monthly installments. Buddy said that college students have no mechanism for taking micro-loans to purchase products such as smartphones and laptops required for their overall learning development. This is because students are not able to get micro loans from non banking financial companies and credit cards from banks.
“I have personally met a lot of college students who say that they don’t want to ask their parents for additional money and I can completely relate to that trend from my days at college,” said Rajan Bajaj, chief executive at Buddy said in a statement. An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, Mr.Bajaj founded Buddy last October along with Deepak Malhotra, an engineer from Birla Institute of Technology and Science. “Back in my second year at BITS, we started getting a six month credit line on any purchase inside the campus and we witnessed a huge consumption spike across the campus,” said Deepak Malhotra, cofounder of Buddy. Ventures.
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