At a time when India’s digital lending industry is severely hit by the lockdown induced by COVID-19, a Mumbai-based non-banking finance company, InCred has announced the acquisition of an unsecured loan provider, Qbera, for a valuation close to $15 million. The acquisition is being touted as the fresh development in the lending industry of the country facing the lockdown.

Launched in 2017, Bengaluru-based Qbera offers short-term personal loans of upto upto Rs 15 lakh, ranging from 12 to 60 months, to salaried individuals upon fulfillment of several criterias. It charges 11.99-35.99 per cent annual rate of interest or APR, against the burrowed sum, and an additional 1-5 per cent administration fee, according to its website. Financial institutions such as IndusInd Bank, RBL Bank and Fullerton, were its lenders.

With the acquisition of Qbera, InCred has now entered into a platform business, a model that operates its services with two or more interdependent groups. InCred maintains that Qbera will be facilitated with its digital distribution strength, along with access to full-stack loan origination capabilities, and risk-sharing partnerships with other financial institutions. The founder of Qbera, Aditya Kumar has joined InCred to head platform and personal loan verticals, while vice-president of product, Anuj Sachdev has taken an advisory role.

“We are confident of the significant value that the Qbera platform will generate as part of the InCred Group,” the statement by Bhupinder Singh, founder of InCred said. The digital lending platform, InCred, offers personal, education, and two-wheeler loans, along with credit to SMEs.

Notably, digital lending companies mandatorily seek for documents — such as Aadhaar card, pan card, voters’ ID, along with joining letter from the company, employee ID, last three months salary slips, bank statements, etc — which has to be submitted via smartphone on their mobile application. However, due to Covid-19 induced lockdown, most of the companies have now stopped lending loans to new customers to avoid bad loans, and are only providing services to its existing customers who have potential to repay the loan.