AbleCredit Secures $1.25Mn Seed Funding Led by Merak Ventures: Revolutionizing AI Underwriting for Small Businesses

AbleCredit Secures $1.25Mn Seed Funding Led by Merak Ventures: Revolutionizing AI Underwriting for Small Businesses

AbleCredit, an AI credit underwriting company, has recently secured $1.25 million in a seed funding round led by Merak Ventures. This funding will enable AbleCredit to scale its AI operations and drive business growth and expansion. The startup aims to revolutionize the underwriting process for small businesses using cutting-edge AI products and solutions.

In emerging nations like India, there is a staggering credit gap of INR 25 trillion, primarily due to a shortage of qualified underwriters and high underwriting costs. AbleCredit aims to bridge this gap by developing generative AI models with voice, vision, and language capabilities. These models function as AI Assistants to Credit Teams, generating comprehensive credit reports on a case-by-case basis while adhering to credit policy and guidelines.

One of the unique aspects of AbleCredit's AI models is their voice and vision capabilities, which enable the startup to serve the informal sector. This sector includes many new-to-credit customers and is data-scarce. AbleCredit's innovative approach has increased underwriting speed by over 20 times and decreased underwriting costs by enhancing the throughput of credit processes by 12 times.

With the investment from Merak Ventures, AbleCredit aims to address the credit gap in the MSME sector by providing small businesses with loans in under a minute. The startup's ambitious goal is to process one million loan applications over the next 12 months.

AbleCredit's co-founding team includes Utkarsh Apoorva (CEO), Harshad Saykhedkar (Chief AI Officer), Ashwini Prabhu (CPO), and Anubhab Bandyopadhyay (CTO). Utkarsh, a serial entrepreneur, has co-founded successful ventures like Reshamandi, Guitarstreet, and Edulabs. Harshad brings over 13 years of AI expertise, while Ashwini and Anubhab leverage their experience in developing products for major corporations such as HDFC, Kotak, ICICI, and Ujjivan, as well as small-scale cottage industries.

"Emerging economies are facing a significant credit gap in the MSME sector, leading to unemployment and economic barriers," said Utkarsh Apoorva, Co-founder and CEO of AbleCredit. "At AbleCredit, our AI system leverages voice, vision, and language capabilities to extend credit analysis into traditionally overlooked sectors. This approach enables us to serve a wide range of industries by analyzing alternative data sources to produce comprehensive credit assessments."

AbleCredit's funding round was led by Merak Ventures, with participation from Venture Catalysts and Helios Holdings. Merak Ventures believes that credit underwriting is ripe for transformation with recent advancements in AI. AbleCredit's innovative tools promise unprecedented speed and efficiency in underwriting, empowering companies to make decisions faster and more effectively.

AbleCredit's seed funding round is the fourth significant investment from Merak Ventures this year. The VC firm is committed to championing impactful solutions for real-world challenges.

Overall, AbleCredit's AI underwriting technology has the potential to revolutionize the lending landscape for small businesses. By leveraging voice, vision, and language capabilities, the startup aims to bridge the credit gap in emerging nations and provide small businesses with faster and more efficient access to loans.