name of the company ezcred launch date january 2017 founding team sachin maheshwari and amiya pathak location bengaluru funding raised in 2017 1 million overall funding raised since starting up 1 million strength of the company 10 industry it operates in fintech one of most noteworthy innovations in the consumer finance scheme has been the concept of no cost emi where purchases are converted into monthly instalments without any interest being charged on it for consumers this meant expensive quality products suddenly became lucrative and affordable when ecommerce companies like flipkart and amazon wanted to expand to the nooks and corners of the country they borrowed the idea and recently started offering no cost emi option on selected products taking a step further you now have many fintech companies that have lined up on ecommerce platforms to offer loans to consumers however there is a new entrant in the alternate lending space which wants to retain its independence while building its business of disbursing shortterm loans to borrowers launched in january 2017 ezcred is an alternate lending startup which offers loans to consumers who walk into shop at offline stores we were very clear that strategically we wanted to be in a place where no one person can control the consumer so online did not make sense to us because you have to go either with flipkart or amazon when you partner with an ecommerce platform you are beholden to them because they control the customer on the other hand customer acquisition cost is very high when you build on your own says ezcred cofounder sachin maheshwari founded by maheshwari and his iit mate amiya pathak the company has also opted to serve offline consumers than those who shop online offline is a much larger play than online a majority of transactions are still done offline says maheshwari catching them at the counter currently available through sales agents in an offline store the startup provides small ticket loans to consumers buying consumer durables and phones in the form of easy monthly instalments emi the customer can choose to turn his sale into an emi at the point of purchase where the sales agents can avail the loan on customers behalf the entire process takes minutes and is executed digitally any customer who walks into a store with which the startup has a tie up will get an option of buying his product on emi the platform has currently tied up with three nbfcs and banks which provide the loans the startup now has plans to roll out an app for customers to enable them to apply for loans directly the platform has a credit assessment system which enables the startup to assess the borrowers repayment capabilities this involves various data sources like the borrowers cibil score bank statements information provided by customers which are then matched with the credit policy of ezcred our initial focus has been on providing an online like experience to consumers at the offline point