Saswat Finance, a pioneering fintech platform has raised $2.6 million in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Ankur Capital. This marks the second investment from Ankur’s third fund. Existing investor Incubate Fund Asia has doubled down on their commitment to Saswat in this round. The funding marks a significant milestone in Saswat’s journey of using data driven approaches to unlock financial services opportunities in untapped markets and mega supply chains, starting with the $135 billion dairy industry.
This funding round will enable Saswat to expand their tech capabilities, add new financial products to their platform, and scale operations across Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh. The infusion of capital will also be used to enhance the data and analytics infrastructure, and to broaden their product portfolio.
For Saswat, India’s dairy sector is a strategic entry point. While the sector is growing at a CAGR of 16% and projected to become a $180 billion industry by 2032, the potential for penetration of formal financial services remains immense. Saswat has already onboarded over 6000 customers on their platform and enabled the disbursal of INR 55 Crores+ in asset-backed loans - making rapid strides towards Saswat’s vision of accelerating tech-led doorstep financial services in underpenetrated sectors.
Started in mid-2022 by seasoned banking veterans Arun Tiwari, Indrajyoti Bhattacharjee, and Ravi Ranjan Chaudhary—each bringing over 18 years of industry expertise—Saswat Finance is focused on transforming accesses to capital and insurance, through a differentiated tech-first approach of leveraging their proprietary platform to bring in superior capabilities on credit origination, managing insurance partnerships, and digital collections.
Saswat’s data-driven model is based on a unique blend of traditional and alternative data, including milk production, cash flow trends, weather patterns, geographic factors, and social indicators. This refined approach allows Saswat to enable faster and better targeted delivery of financial products. Starting with enabling cattle loans, insurance and para-veterinary services, the company is rapidly expanding into broader offerings tailored to small businesses with strong adjacencies.
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Arun Tiwari, CEO & Co-Founder of Saswat Finance, said, “In a country where over 65% of the population resides in rural areas, India’s rural economy holds immense potential, however systemic barriers like informal lending, inadequate documentation, and lack of efficient last-mile distribution have ensured that a large financial services opportunity is underserved. Saswat is uniquely positioned at the intersection of fintech, agritech, and insuretech to redefine access to financial services for underpenetrated segments. At Saswat, we’re blending tech and trust to deliver credit, risk protection, and productivity advisory services directly to customer’s doorstep. This new funding will empower us to advance our mission by investing in technology, deepening our reach, and aggressively scaling our operations.”
"When we first met Saswat's team, we were impressed by the thoroughness of their tech-first approach for enabling financial solutions to markets with large untapped potential, strategically starting with income-generating assets like cattle. With the ongoing digital transformation of the dairy sector and other large supply chains as a tailwind, Saswat is addressing a critical gap in the market by using their tech platform and leveraging alternative data for delivering substantial value at the last mile. We're excited to back Saswat's vision to transform financial services for this large economic market.“ added Krishnan Neelakantan, Partner at Ankur Capital.
“Saswat Finance is building a full-stack finance platform to unlock credit access to rural India with a very unique approach of blending the credit at the point of sale with a mix of strong alternative data. We are delighted to double down on our partnership with Saswat Finance, a team with a unique mix of strong financial services experience and execution capabilities”, said Rajeev Ranka, Partner at Incubate Fund Asia.
Backed by early-stage investors like Seedstars VC, Sparrow VC, and Incubate Fund Asia in their earlier seed round, Saswat has associated closely with the dairy cooperatives ecosystem (AMUL in Maharashtra, Britannia, Shahaj & Srijini, Nandini, Schreiber Dynamix, Lactalis, Hatsun), insurers (Iffco Tokio General Insurance, Agriculture Insurance Company (AIC), Credit Access Insurance), and lending institutions (RBL Bank Ltd, Shivalik Small Finance Bank, Ambit Finvest, Western Capital, etc.) to extend its distribution and product capabilities.
