They turned their P2P lending startup into a SaaS product

Photo credit: Mario Bollini.

For a fintech startup to be successful, it has to pack a one-two punch. There’s the “fin” side – an innovative idea that comes from a deep understanding of the financial landscape – and the “tech” side – a secure and smooth enough solution that can power that idea and keep customers around.

Most people agree that a majority of the weight needs to be on the “fin” side of things – “but then you need to forcefully add a tech co-founder,” counters Vipul Rawal. “Or, you can go to guys like us.”

By “guys like us” he means FintechLabs, a startup that helps companies create their own peer-to-peer (P2P) lending sites.

P2P lending sites let individuals borrow money from other individuals and companies. They’re faster to use than banks and safe – which means these sites need to be run by powerful technology.

FintechLabs’ main product is P2PForce, an API-based software that claims to help anyone create an end-to-end peer-to-peer lending platform site within thirty days. It includes services like bank statement analysis – a quick way to read through a customer’s bank statements and figure out their financial behavior – and loan management – a module that tracks the status of all loans.

It’s not cheap – while pricing varies based on the situation, their end-to-end P2P lending services can sometimes cost up to US$20,000 dollars to set up plus a monthly cost of US$1,000. If you choose to go for a single service, things are a bit cheaper – around US$0.80 for a bank analysis report, for example.

But that hasn’t deterred customers from using the startup. It has customers across Europe, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In India where it’s headquartered, most P2P lenders are using at least some of its services, including i-lend and JM Financial-backed Faircent.

A good idea

Both Vipul and his co-founder Vishal Sahu have had their fair share of startup ups and downs.

Vipul launched and shut down BakeryBite, a startup that delivered bakery goods, while Vishal worked on a peer-to-peer lending service in Europe. Vishal struggled with co-founder troubles and a stifling environment, and decided to return to India. That’s when the two decided to launch their own P2P lending startup for small and medium businesses – “like CapitalFloat or LendingKart,” says Vipul.

They began working on LendingMantra. It was operational for less than six months.

“We made it until December,” Vipul laughs. “We spent four of five months building our tech, had good long convos with the likes of eBay and AskMeBazaar to provide loans to their seller base.”

“That’s when we realized – we were just direct sales agents for banks,” he says. “We were adding no value to the lenders. The real issues we were seeing were in things like credit assessment, and we wanted to make all of that easier.”

Instead, they took the technology they’d built and used it to launch FintechLabs’ first product, P2PForce. It is a SaaS platform, something Vipul refers to as a plug-and-play for anyone who wants to create a P2P lending site. It received an undisclosed amount of angel funding in October 2015.

India-specific