NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Bengaluru-based Artoo IT Solutions, which has developed a financial customer relationship management solution for the financial sector, has raised $500,000 (Rs 3.1 crore) in Series A round of funding from Accion Venture Labs and Switzerland-based Rianta Capital Zurich’s Artha Initiative.

Launched in May 2010, Artoo’s CRM solution offers a suite of modules, such as lead management, loan origination and credit underwriting, and is targeted at clients in microfinance, micro, small and medium enterprise lending, and mainstream banking.

The company plans to use this funding to hire more people in order to expand to South East Asia, starting with the Philippines by the end of 2015 as well as improve performance and features of the technology platform to allow customers to personalize their financial product. Total team strength is 16 and it plans to take this to 40 by the year end.

“We have found our value proposition with our clients and now it’s time to further penetrate the SME lending market and now we want to look at mainstream banks,” said Sameer Segal, founder and CEO, Artoo.

The company has five large enterprise clients including microfinance institution Ujjivan Financial Services. It is present in 24 states through its clients, disbursing Rs 18 crore every month through its partners and this number is growing 20% month-on-month.

“To enable microfinance (and financial services in general) move into the digital age, we need tools and technologies like Artoo to support this transition. In India, there is tremendous government and private sector push to enable better credit to underserved consumers and micro-small businesses,” said Rishabh Khosla, senior investment analyst, Accion Venture Lab.