Tired of Lending and Borrowing? Here’s an App That Saves You the Stress!

Faircent.com is an online peer-to-peer platform that enables creditworthy borrowers lower their cost of loan, and individual investors to lend directly to their community, by earning high returns.  Founder, Rajat Gandhi shares his bit on entrepreneurship.

Read on!

Please tell us about yourself and your co-founder. Did you always want to become an entrepreneur? Kindly elucidate.

With a specialisation in marketing, strategy, and brand building, I have headed multiple online-focussed initiatives. For instance, at The Times Group, I was one of the founding member of the team that launched brands like Timesjobs.com, Magicbricks.com, and Simplymarry.com. I was also the India Head at Performics, a digital marketing agency of Chicago-based Publicis Group.

Vinay Mathews  is the COO at Faircent.com and also a leading internet expert. He previously headed Alliances for Rediff.com and has been the Regional Head for Interactive Services at Sify Technologies Ltd. Prior to co-founding Faircent.com, he was the Country Head – Sales & Service Delivery at Timesjobs.com, a Times of India Group company.

Having held leadership positions and headed entire business verticals, I feel that both of us had always had a latent desire to establish and run our own business. I told Vinay about the concept that would eventually become Faircent.com, and he immediately signed up for it.

Tell us about Faircent.com. When did you start the journey?

Faircent.com was an idea that came about from a personal experience. One day, while browsing through my Facebook feed, I noticed a colleague’s post requesting his contacts to fund a portion of the cost for a new bike he wanted to buy.

I realised what was missing was a trustworthy online platform that could facilitate such an exchange. A platform like Faircent could not only help reduce India’s massive credit deficit, but could also provide a lucrative alternative avenue of investment to individuals with surplus cash. This was when I, along with Vinay Mathews and Nitin Gupta, established Faircent.com in 2014.

Has Faircent.com opened up its API platform for users? Tell us about it.

Rajat Gandhi

Yes, we have recently opened up our API platform for developers. Over the past three years, we have meticulously built the technology stack at Faircent.com to create an extensive and robust tech infrastructure.

Faircent.com’s open API platform will enable new fintech entrants and offline businesses to leverage our extensive technological expertise to build new digital lending products and to integrate existing solutions into their offerings. Leveraging our ready-made solutions and customising them to fulfil their business requirements will not only help these businesses to save on the costs of building the entire tech infrastructure up from scratch, but will also enable them to launch and scale their operations faster.

Coming to finances, is the company a bootstrapped venture? If no, please tell us about the funding received.

Faircent.com has received a total of $7 million as capital investment till date and counts prominent VCs and financial companies as its investors, including JM Financial, 3one4 Capital, M&S Partners Pte Ltd, Aarin Capital, Incofin Investment Management, Muthoot Fincorp, EIP, Das Capital, Starharbor Asia Pte Ltd, and CUS.4

What kind of response have you seen from the audience so far? Could you share some numbers?

We have received an overwhelming response from our target audience since our launch. We have more than 3 lakh registered borrowers and 35,000 registered lenders on our platform at present. Loans worth INR 30 crore have been disbursed through Faircent.com till date, and we are currently disbursing around 400+ loans on a monthly basis.

Lastly, where do you see yourself five year down the line?

In the next five years, the plan is to expand our operational ambit and take our tech-driven lending solutions to a much larger section of the Indian population. We are keeping a close eye on all promising developments within the fintech domain, especially the blockchain technology, which can be used to further refine our end-user services. If we continue on the growth trajectory that we are currently on, I foresee Faircent.com further consolidate its domain leadership position to become the preferred platform of choice for borrowers and lenders across India.