Vietnamese P2P lender Tima nets $3m funding to improve credit scoring and expand offline

Tima’s management team / Photo credit: Tima

Vietnamese fintech startup Tima has raised US$3 million in fresh funding and unveiled a partnership with one of the country’s biggest banks.

Tima will use the series B injection to grow its presence across 63 cities in Vietnam, as well as for tech development and talent recruitment.

The company runs an online marketplace for consumer-focused financial services and a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform.

It claims to have almost 24,000 lenders and 2.13 million borrowers using its P2P service, which is mainly used by borrowers to secure smaller loans for short three-to-six month terms.

Freemium model

Tima’s freemium model means that lenders can access a basic “level 1” service without charge. However, they have to begin paying the startup at “level 2” to make use of additional features. For the comprehensive “level 3” package, lenders agree to share revenue with Tima in return for full support throughout the lending process, including application, credit scoring, disbursement, and debt collection.

The Tima team at work in the office / Photo credit: Tima

Co-founder Cong Tran told Tech in Asia that Tima has handled more than US$1.7 billion of loans cumulatively across all service levels, with revenue growing over 30 times since its series A round in December 2016.

He added, “We are on track to be profitable this financial year, but we’re willing to continue investing more for long-term growth and expansion.”

Tima has built its own credit-scoring tech, and some of the series B funding will be apportioned to enhancing it.

“This scoring system needs a lot of customer data, so we will increase cooperation with partners to expand our data sources,” said Cong. These sources include telecommunications companies, insurance firms, utilities providers, social media platforms, and ecommerce sites, he explained.

Tima has also announced strategic partnership with VietinBank Insurance Corporation, an insurance arm of state-owned Vietinbank. The deal will see VietinBank Insurance provide assistance to borrowers who find that they may be unable to pay off their loans as previously arranged.

O2O

Another important element of Tima’s growth strategy is tapping the significant number of Vietnamese who do not have an internet connection or don’t regularly browse the web. As such, some of the new funding will be invested in setting up “O2o” (online-to-offline) consulting points – in physical stores or kiosks, for example – particularly in less-developed provinces.