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Show HN: Credy – Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform for India (credy.in)
65 points by harshitsv67 3400 days ago
18 comments

> https://www.credy.in/investor_Dashboard

The site looks janky, the fonts aren't rendering properly in chrome. (http://i.imgur.com/iRvmG2p.png)

Also, I was thinking of putting in some money but isn't 18% default rates kinda high? or is this some kind of test data (without any indication).

The site looks mostly OK under Firefox, but the <canvas>es are rendering at (I believe) 50% of their intended height. This results in graphics on there being smudged and distorted, looking twice as wide as they should be.

I'm on a HiDPI/Retina display, for what it's worth.

Thanks for the feedback! We are looking into it.
Thanks for the feedback! Just to add to my partner Harshit's point, we are sending personalized reports to lenders which show live stats.
Like we described earlier, it was test data. Here is the dashboard for your reference (https://www.credy.in/investor_Dashboard) Apologies for the confusion.
Thanks for feedback. We are working on website along with rolling out new features. The dashboard page you saw was a mockup that was for testing (hence had all numbers as 18). We are fixing it, thanks for pointing out.

Actual default rate is of course lower than that.

18% isn't that high; fixed deposits (almost no risk) give about 8-9%.

Inflation in India is quite high.

I meant 18% default rates, not interest rates. But I'm still surprised there are 18% interest loans in India even though I was aware of the going 8~9% CD rates (am Indian).
The rates depend on the credit quality of the borrower which depends on their financials, credit history and income.

Rates can be much higher in informal lending space (I have myself heard cases of more than 70% annualised rate, charged over a smaller duration). Borrowers in that space can benefit by moving to a more efficient platform like Credy.

Thanks for the comment! The loan interests vary as per type, for example home loans are very long tenor, lower rate and collateralized. For personal loans the rates are typically on the higher side. We offer loans starting from 12%
Private lenders in India often charge up to 24-25%
Hi, I am registered on the site as a lender. But clicking on the Invest Now button takes me to the Contact Us page. I have dropped a note also at founders@credy.com but no response.
We are the first P2P lending platform that uses end-to-end biometric verification to help eliminate fake users and impersonation. Peer lending is new to India, and recent financial digitisation has made the business and product offering more attractive.

Our customers are people who need small to medium personal loans -- they might need a loan for debt refinancing, a wedding, education or an emergency. We offers fast, paperless online loans to borrowers.

For lenders, Credy offers a professionally chosen, risk managed, trustworthy investment option, and great data and analytics tools. We guarantee 100% genuine and verified borrowers.

The founders have extensive background in finance and tech from Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale and Amazon.

Happy to answer questions you may have. Checkout our blog at http://blog.credy.in for interesting articles on finance in India.

- Harshit Vaishnav Co-Founder, Credy https://www.credy.in

Nice idea! Good luck to you! A few things you might want to correct on the website. The investor_dashboard page leads to what looks like dummy data. On the Investor FAQ, the "How safe is the Investor's Money?" question doesn't work.
Thanks for your feedback. We had both the fixes in our rollout today, they should be fixed soon.

Happy that you liked the idea :)

Nice. Who do you use as your biometric verification provider?
Hi Pratish / harshit,

This looks very interesting. Was curious about a few things:

a) If I understand correctly, you are introducing p2p lending, on the lines of the Lending Club (the pioneer?) & I2I funding (Indian P2P lending company). Am I on the right track?

b) What is the typical customer profile you guys are targeting (and who have actually used your service?)

I ask because I'm curious about how you are planning to bridge the language / awareness gap if you are targeting non-English readers / speakers.

Disclosure: I am a partner in a start-up (3 months old) that is targeting blue-collar workers. Among the areas we are focusing on is financial literacy (clients being banks, etc.) Our experience has been that English is a significant barrier to adoption & communication. Therefore, pretty much everything we are developing is multi-lingual from the start.

(We are also developing solutions for the textile & apparel industries, safety & security services (Govt. and otherwise, and healthcare / pharma) )

Thanks for the comment! a) yes correct b) Please check out our investor dashboard https://www.credy.in/investor_Dashboard to see the data. c) You are absolutely right, language is a big barrier. We are also focusing on credit education and plan to expand to other languages. Please reach us at founders@credy.in to discuss more.
Hi Pratish, just emailed you! :)
Thanks a lot! We will revert soon :)
Thanks everyone for the great participation.

Team Credy https://www.credy.in

Looks neat ! Like the way you are leveraging India stack.

Qs for you:

1. Shouldn't a new age lending platform not use old school mechanisms like CIBIL. I would guess that a new age lending platform build its own CIBIL.

2. Doesnt the requirement of Salary Slips preclude the very same people from accessing loans who do not otherwise have access to ? Also I am guessing that this will be like 1% of the population.

3. If you have the means to coinvest 50% and if you guarantee market beating outcomes, why don't go all the way to 100% ?

Thanks for the comment. Good to know you are aware of India Stack. CIBIL still holds valuable information. We overlay that with other inputs using our own proprietary algorithm.

Salary is a regular source of income, which improves repayment capacity.

We are a platform, we don't want to be lending our capital as a primary business.

As an investor, I assume Creedy will help with the legal documentation.

1. How does the platform ensure Borrower is paying on time and/or reminded for delayed-payments

2. Co-investment. This means you are sharing equal risk. But not sure how a platform could scale with the amount of money required. Are you planning to become a bank? I'd really like to know how your biz-model would work in this case. And how do you prevent a borrower-lender gang up to fraud you?

3. In case of non-payment, legal procedures could be costly and for small amounts it might be infeasible. How does Creedy help with the legal issues and legal costs?

Thanks for the comment!

1. Yes, we do the legal documentation so it is not a headache for you. Legal costs associated with non-payment are covered as part of this contract. 2. We have features like post dated checks and auto-debits from bank account to ensure borrowers pay on time, among other things. 3. We are not planning to become a bank, reason why banks have such a large spread is because they have huge operational expenses. We will always aim to be as lean as possible by automating processes.

Hi the website looks rad - but can you elaborate a little on how you plan to increase the trust element on your website ? As this is a new concept, investors like me might be wary of investing.
Thanks for the appreciation!

Trust is indeed the biggest pain point in peer lending that we have focused hard to solve.

1. We guarantee 100% genuine and verified borrowers because of mandatory biometric authentication. This solves problem of identity theft and fake users.

2. We verify borrower's employer and their unique ID as well, so that there is a deterrent to improper behaviour on part of the borrower.

3. We co-invest with our lenders so that we have a skin in the game.

4. We also have auto-debit and post dated cheques to ensure money is returned on time.

How exactly would biometric authentication stop fake users? Would you be using some central database to identify people or are you gonna make your own database?

How exactly do you plan to verify employer information?

Sorry if I may sound cynical but ive spent enough time in smaller indian cities that i can imagine ways on how people could try to take advantage of your platform.

Yes we use a central database. Employer verification is done electronically.

We can understand the apprehension. However, lot of things are digitising fast, and it is getting more difficult to do financial misconduct without leaving a trail. We keep working hard in adding robust checks in the system, knowing that otherwise the problem you mention exists.

They use Aadhaar.
Couple of questions:

1. What exactly is Creedy's business model? You claim on your website that you charge zero fees, and digging around the FAQ reveals no other charges or figures, so I'm a bit curious as to how Creedy generates revenue.

2. What makes you standout from the throngs of P2P lenders in India? As I understand it, companies like Lendbox and Faircent pretty much offer the same service as you guys, plus already have an established user base, so why should I use your service?

P.S. Are you hiring interns?

1. Our pricing is mentioned here (https://www.credy.in/pricing). We believe that using automation and analytics well can contain costs significantly, and we being a marketplace model, can benefit from a lot of leverage in order to make more revenue with less per unit costs.

2. Trust is a pain point that we solve by ensuring end-to-end linking with Aadhaar. We also provide investment recommendations in order to minimise portfolio risk.

Interns - we would love to have a chat, drop us a mail at careers@credy.in mentioning this conversation. Thanks!

Yep, just emailed you!
Most of the non-nationalized banks in India brazenly cheat borrowers and even harass them for lot of unnecessary documents and even after closing out the loan, cause delay in issuing in loan closure letters etc. This kind of peer to peer lending platform is the need of the hour. I want to know if I can refinance my car loan through this platform ?
I don't like banks either - but this is incorrect.

What you call harassment is part of the Process for better due-dilegence. Most of the processes are created by bodies like RBI that are not-private. And they are bureaucratic and slow. But these same processes also prevent something like subprime crisis.

Unfortunately, when these regulating bodies work fast on policy making - people complain (remember daily demonetization policy changes??).

Getting loans from any bank (private or nationalized) definitely feels like harassment, but try to put yourself in their shoes.

Nationalized banks on the other hand - They have government to back them. So they can actually afford to be a bit wrong and govt will rescue them (from taxpayer's money)

Platforms like Creedy are great - but as an investor I would be worried about lending a larger amount

We totally understand your apprehension, this is a new concept in India. We have some risk mitigation strategies in place and rolling out many more soon (which I may add, typical banks do not use). Please reach us at founders@credy.in in case you would like to try this as an investment opportunity.
Thanks for the comment! Yes, new age lending companies like Credy are doing finance processing electronically and with minimal documentation. Please register as a borrower on the website, we will evaluate your profile.
One question I have is , can we claim tax rebates if we raised a home loan from you folks
I think they are not much worried about why you want a loan, as long as your financials are in good shape they would connect you with a lender. At least it seems like that from the website.
Getting a loan or even a credit card in India as a freelancer is a massive pain in the ass. Most would flat out refuse to even entertain self-employed people.
How does the process work for an investor?

I just specify my risk appetite and you choose the borrower for me? or do you give me a list of options and I can choose who to lend to? Ideally I would prefer the first option.

Can I also limit my investments to a particular kind of borrowers, say who wants it for Educational purposes, is that possible?

Thanks for the comment! Yes, we understand your risk appetite, and we expose borrowers whose risk profile matches yours. We can also filter or limit as per your preferred purpose.
That's nice, even better if you can give investors some guarantees on default risk.

Another question. I was looking at the investor dashboard and it shows a 'salary to EMI ratio', does that mean people who aren't employed with a regular salary are out? Like small business owners and such.

In my personal experience, I find that they are usually more interested in short-term borrowing since their cash inflows and outflows don't always balance, leading them to having to borrow quickly and for a short term.

You're absolutely right about the businesses. We are not giving loans to them at the moment, however we plan to expand to that segment soon.
I currently invests in https://www.lendbox.in, even though lot of delays in repayment. No actual default has happened in my knowledge on the platform. What is your tackling solution for delays and potential defaults
Hi Rajat, thanks for your comment! We are rolling out auto-debit feature to pull money from the borrower's bank account so that you don't have to track it. We also have processes to followup with borrowers automatically before due dates to remind him to pay the installment.
Here is our updated investor dashboard https://www.credy.in/investor_Dashboard which shows how Credy portfolio is performing. More metrics coming soon!
Do you guys plan to create pools from lender money, so as to reduce the risk even further?
Thanks for the comment! Yes, we will pool money from a lender and disburse it to multiple borrowers to reduce exposure per borrower.
What happens in case of non-payment of dues?

Credy will levy a penal interest of 24% per annum on the due amount, in case of non-payment by due date. In worst case Credy will help lenders in getting all possible legal resources for recovery of dues.

Do you have an app where I can track my investments?
Thanks for the comment! We are launching an Android app soon
The invest now link doesn't seem to be working?
A fix was rolled out, you can also mail to founders@credy.in for lending opportunities. Thanks!
Looks like the site is delinked from here?
Sorry about that. In case you can't see it, please check out here - https://www.credy.in