Tala, a digital lending startup, raises $ 110 million, plans to expand India – Crunchbase News

To help more than three billion underbanked adults have a chance to get a loan, Tala raised $ 110 million in a Series D round led by RPS.

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Shivani Siroya, founder and CEO of the Santa Monica digital lending company, says there are 3 billion adults worldwide who “don’t have access to basic financial services, like the ability to borrow, save or grow their money ”.

The company currently has 500 employees located in Southern California, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and India. The new money will be used to expand its presence in India, as well as to offer new services. To date, Tala has raised $ 219.4 million from investors such as Revolution, Institutional Venture Partners and PayPal Ventures.

On its website, Tala says that “anyone with an Android smartphone can apply for a loan and receive an instant decision, regardless of their credit history.” Loans range from $ 10 to $ 500.

But that loan size, in some cases, turns into a noticeable difference. For example, it helped a father in Kenya pay for his son’s university fees. Or an entrepreneur from the same area is starting a car wash business.

If all goes well, the people who deserve the loans but don’t have the infrastructure to sell their story to anyone else will get the loan.

We have followed the rise of the larger digital lending space. Yesterday, for example, Better.com raised $ 160 million Series C for digital mortgages. Better has funded more than $ 4 billion in loans since its product launched in 2016. And the elephant in the room, SoFi, which provides loans and wealth management, has raised $ 2.5 billion, this which makes it one of the best-funded startups. in the financial technology and lending sector.

And for Tala, the future looks bright, at least in terms of investor interest. Billions have been deployed to similar startups, and there is an abundant pipeline for late-stage transactions: from January 1, 2014 to today, over 50% of venture capital investments in loan and development startups. investment were at the start-up stage.

However, venture capital dollars don’t say the whole story. The loan is a difficult space to exploit. SoFi, for example, has struggled to stop staff from handing out inappropriate loans in an attempt to increase their own bonuses. And aside from high-level executive rotations, SoFi has also struggled to meet its growth targets, resulting in layoffs.

Either way, Tala elevating a supergiant tower puts him in a new cohort of contenders. And for those looking for accessible and quick loans, there have probably never been so many options on the table.

Methodology

The funding analysis for investment and lending startups was based on Crunchbase’s “loans and investments” category group. The startups included in this group of categories are determined by automation and manual curation, leaving some room for error in the classification. Therefore, investment totals should be taken in a directional manner. In addition, only funding cycles labeled as start-up, early stage, or advanced stage were included in the annual funding totals. Notably, Ant Financial significantly skews funding totals. In 2016, Ant Financial $ 4.5 billion Series B accounted for more than half of total venture capital funds in the category of loans and investments. Ant Financial has a similar impact on known funding totals in 2018 with its $ 14 billion Series C raise. For the numbers behind the graph, visit this Crunchbase Pro Query.