Our Story

Back in 2015, while interacting with one of the auto drivers during a ride, Rohit Garg (Co-founder and CEO) was shocked to know that the driver would routinely borrow small sums of Rs.1000 for petrol from his local lender at as high as 10% interest for a day. Upon further market research and discussions with various financial institutions and underserved borrowers, Rohit realized that formal credit access is severely restricted in India. One of the major reasons is that financial institutions have traditionally relied on credit histories to price a borrower’s risk, and are unable to serve people with limited data. That in itself is a chicken and egg problem leaving a vast majority out of the system. Additionally, heavier cost base and manual processes render small-ticket loans unprofitable for these financial institutions. As a result, India has one of the highest dependence on informal sector borrowing with related issues of one falling into debt trap and negative impact on their wellbeing.

Rohit along with his friends – Jayant Upadhyay, Amit Chandel, and Vinay Singh founded SmartCoin with the aim of bringing greater financial inclusion, and providing affordable and reliable access to credit to the vast underserved middle/lower-income segments. We decided to use mobile as a medium of our customer interaction to leverage the benefits of technology and also to reduce the barriers of access that drive up the cost of operations and deprive the creditworthy borrowers of access to timely and affordable credit.