Popular Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi is in discussion to pick up stake in yet another Fintech startup ‘Zest-Money,’ according to people familiar with the matter. Xiaomi will reportedly be part of the fundraising exercise that aims to raise $20 million for Zest-Money. Existing investor PayU may also be part of this fundraising round.
Investment in Zest-Money will mark Xiaomi’s second investment in the Indian startup, after it led an $8-million round in a Fintech startup Krazybee last year. Xiaomi had invested in the Bengaluru based startup through its dedicated venture capital firm founded by the company’s founder Lei Jun.
The Chinese smartphone company’s investment in Krazybee is understandably for boosting the sales of its MI and Redmi phones. Interestingly, it already has a similar partnership with Zest-Money that enables customers to get easy credit for buying Xiaomi phones.
Zest-Money helps customers to get loans without credit cards
Like most Fintech startups, Zest Money also offers easy credits and loans. However, unlike most other competitors those are mainly targeting SME’s, Zest Money follows B2C models that mainly targets customers looking for loans to buy high-end products. Especially those customers that do not own credit cards.
Zest Money offers instant loans to such customers, after its special algorithm assess the credit worthiness of the borrowers. The startup has tied up with e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon to help customers get easy loan on various online products.
With technology becoming a huge leveraging factor, Fintech space has become a crowded place. Over the years multitude of Fintech startups have cropped up that promises provided loans ranging to lakhs in a matter of few minutes. The implosion of Fintech startups is also partly because the investment community is taking a huge interest in the space and has already millions in various startups.