India-based e-commerce consumer finance provider ZestMoney expanded its series A round to $19.9m yesterday with a $13.4m extension led by consumer electronics producer Xiaomi.
The second close included PayU, the mobile payment subsidiary of media and e-commerce group Naspers that invested $3.7m to take a 20% stake in ZestMoney in the $6.5m first tranche in 2016, as well as Ribbit Capital and Omidyar Network, which also backed that close.
Founded in 2015, ZestMoney runs an online platform that enables users without credit cards to access financing for e-commerce purchases at the checkout stage, meaning they can buy items and pay for them over the course of up to three years.
Customers can get real-time credit approval from ZestMoney and the loans are provided by the company’s financing partners. Its e-commerce partners include Xiaomi, which tapped the company to help its Mi Finance offering in India, Amazon and Flipkart.
The extra series A capital will fund the development of ZestMoney’s artificial intelligence, facial and voice recognition technology, co-founder and CEO Lizzie Chapman told TechCrunch, adding that it expects to raise a larger round soon.
Ribbit Capital and Omidyar Network had initially supplied $2m for the company in a 2015 seed round. Xiaomi’s investment was made as part of a $1bn corporate venturing drive in India that was announced in November 2017.