Founded in 2016 as Square Capital, the fintech company was rechristened as Urban Money in 2021. It started off as an online-to-offline (O2O) loan aggregator in India to capture the captive home loan business arising from Square Yards’ real estate transactions
35-year-old Adarsh Raghav, a senior software engineer at an MNC in Bangalore decided to buy a home in a Puravankara residential project during the October festive season in 2021. An SBI customer, he had applied for a home loan. However, the unending maze of approvals and paperwork, and delay in loan approval pushed him to call off the application and choose seven-year-old fintech Urban Money, the mortgage subsidiary of Square Yards.
Urban Money got his loan got sanctioned in just 15 minutes. This swift loan approval process bowled him over.
Targeted at clients like Adarsh, Urban Money had its breakout year in FY 2022 when it helped ~15,444 customers with mortgage, disbursing a staggering INR 5875 Cr worth of loans.
Founded in 2016 as Square Capital, the fintech company was rechristened as Urban Money in 2021. It started off as an online-to-offline (O2O) loan aggregator in India to capture the captive home loan business arising from Square Yards’ real estate transactions. Square Yards’ relationship with 500+ real estate developers across India and overseas helped Urban Money source quality business at lower costs.
And within just 3 years, it announced its market dominance by becoming the largest organized distributor of secured mortgages in the country. Currently, Urban Money facilitates INR 1200 Cr+ of loan disbursals every month, with home loans and loan against property contributing more than 75% of the business.
“Urban Money is aiming to create the largest mortgage ecosystem in India. We want to leverage technology, capital and manpower to help fuel our growth journey and transform the fintech industry by enabling easier access to credit for potential loan seekers,” said Amit Prakash Singh, Co-Founder and CBO, Urban Money.
Solving customer pain-points one loan at a time
For decades, applying for home loans in India has been marred by extensive manual application processes and compliance checks. Here Urban Money comes into play, acting as India’s first unbiased loan advisor and online aggregator, providing loan offers from financial institutions and end-to-end fulfillment support on a single platform. It also has an offline sales team that manages client documentation, and sanctions and assists the client till the entire cycle of loan disbursement. The fintech player has also been successful in navigating the multi-faceted web of compliances and regulations through strategic partnerships with 100+ banking and NBFC partners, thus paving the way towards stable source of funds and eventually increase wider use cases of its loan portfolio.
Embracing New Technologies
At the core of Urban Money’s lending ecosystem, lies a suite of tech capabilities driving its fintech powertrain, helping the company disburse paperless mortgages in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks.
Once a customer fills his financial requirements online, an AI-based eligibility engine determines the borrower’s debt capacity and eligibility and then matches him with the best lender in seconds. The success rate of this process is over 90%. Tie-ups with NSDL and credit bureaus take care of identity verification, e-KYC and e-Signature while direct integration with Bank LOS system facilitates instant loan sanctions. This tech-induced efficiency helps Urban Money minimize human intervention and achieve operating cost efficacy.
Tapping into the unchartered credit vacuum
Home loan disbursals through online home loan brokers are estimated to increase from ~US$ 9 billion in the financial year 2021 to ~US$ 28 billion in the financial year 2026.
Emphasizing on this goal, Urban Money, after having cemented its place in major metros, has set its sights on tier II and III cities where access to cheaper home loans is still very stunted. The fintech company has opened more than 150 offices in various cities across India and is pegged to open another 100 by the end of 2023. Besides this, it has strengthened its offline capabilities with a 150000 strong channel partner network to take control of the upcoming digital lending boom in these untapped markets.
Scaling with a clear focus on loan fulfillment
Urban Money is rapidly fortifying its technological prowess to strengthen the entire cycle of mortgage lending for easy market entry and create the right buzz around its products and services, to realize its ambition of becoming the largest digital mortgage lending platform in India.
Till date, Urban Money has disbursed an astounding amount of INR 18,450 Cr+ which is the highest transaction figure by a mortgage lender in India. Facilitating a home loan mortgage transaction is itself a complex cycle. But Urban Money has cracked the code. It has made good use of the absence of a national-level mortgage distributor and disrupted this space with its technological abilities.
Disclaimer: This article is a paid publication and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times does not endorse/subscribe to the content(s) of the article/advertisement and/or view(s) expressed herein. Hindustan Times shall not in any manner, be responsible and/or liable in any manner whatsoever for all that is stated in the article and/or also with regard to the view(s), opinion(s), announcement(s), declaration(s), affirmation(s) etc., stated/featured in the same.
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