January 23, 2018 – Shubham Housing Development Finance Company, one of India’s leading housing finance companies providing housing loans and housing finance solutions to families with informal incomes, today announced that its series D round has received an investment of ~INR 305 crore through a combination of a primary and secondary sale which was led by marquee investor Premji Invest. It has also seen participation from its existing investors Helion Venture Partners & Elevar Equity.
This round has also seen the exit of Accion, whose investment is managed by Quona Capital, and Saama Capital. “We are privileged to be supported by such partners,” mentions CEO Sanjay Chaturvedi. Shubham along with private equity investors has also raised debt of more than INR 800 crore from a number domestic and international players. “With this, Shubham is poised to grow its loan book from INR 1000 crore to more than INR 6000 crore in the next 5 years,” says Chaturvedi.
As part of this deal, Rahul Garg, Partner, Premji Invest will join the Shubham board. “We fully support the promoters in their endeavour to provide affordable housing solutions for the marginalized sections of society. This is also aligned with the governments stated objective of “Housing for All”. Shubham has scaled up to be one of the leading affordable housing players by building fully automated underwriting and risk management practices, through their in-house sourcing mechanism which makes the company unique. Premji Invest will look to work with Shubham founders in building robust processes and systems to help scale the organisation to the next level,” remarks Rahul.
It was during their years with leading MNCs and domestic lending companies, that the founders Sanjay Chaturvedi and Ajay Oak, realised that a significant segment of customers from the urban working population were denied access to formal credit to purchase new dwelling units or to improve their existing ones since they could not evidence income on paper. Most mortgage companies were treating people with no formal income proof as being on negative lists and they were considered to be a huge risk.
Shubham was formed in 2011 with the goal of providing access to formal credit to this vast working class population, to help these urban lower-income families own a decent home. It has devised a unique process of an intensive budget analysis to recognize the real income and affordability of the household to underwrite loans, irrespective of the source of income.
Growth has been rapid as seen by the fact that they have disbursed loans to more than 26,000 households primarily been driven by increased demand for affordable housing across Tier II and Tier III cities where it has a strong presence across 12 states.
“With an ever expanding presence, we plan to scale up through a combination of leveraging proprietary internal & external technologies and multiple partnerships across categories to ensure superior customer delivery and be amongst the top housing finance players in this space,” remarks COO Ajay Oak.