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Citi Ventures makes first fintech investment in India

Citi Ventures has made its first fintech investment in India, joining a $60 million raise in bank lending software house Lentra.

Citi ventures joined existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and SIG Venture Capital in the capital raise.

The four-year-old technology startup is one of the fastest growing enterprise SaaS companies in India, offering banks out-of-the-box modules for different parts of the lending lifecycle.

Lentra's lending cloud services more than 40 banks and processes over 3 million applications monthly. It has processed over 13 billion transactions and $21Bn worth of loans on its platform so far.

The company intends to use the capital injection to expand overseas in Asia and the US.

Everett Leonidas, director & Apac lead ibvestor for Citi Ventures, says: “Lentra is our first fintech investment in India, and we are very excited about the team’s ability to develop and scale low-friction software solutions for lenders. As a global bank, we look forward to Lentra scaling their products and platform internationally.”

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Editorial | what does this mean?

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Comments: (3)

Melvin Haskins - Haston International Limited - 14 November, 2022, 10:43

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I think you will find that Citi have a long history in India. I recall CITIL - Citicorp Information Technology India Limited in the 1980s.

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Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune 15 November, 2022, 12:20

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@Melvin Haskins + 1.

My ex-employer Citicorp Information Technology India Limited (CITIL) was carved out from the inhouse IT department of Citibank in circa 1985, received funding from Citi Ventures a few years later, dropped the Citicorp from its name when it IPOd in circa 2000 under the name of i-flex solutions.

It was the sale of Citi Ventures' stake to Oracle in 2005 that led to i-flex becoming a subsidiary of Oracle Inc. and subsequently being renamed to Oracle Financial Services Software Limited.

(Why it's still a separate listed company with its own name instead of becoming a division of Oracle is a story for another day.)

Memory serves, Citi Ventures subsequently invested in a few more providers of financial technology in India e.g. Polaris.

Lettra is certainly not the first fintech investment of Citi Ventures in India. Although, I must admit, the term "fintech" was - wait for it - "Avant La Lettre" when the VC arm of Citicorp made the CITIL and Polaris investments.