BlackSoil invests $4.5+ Mn of growth capital in three new-age startups

Leading venture debt player BlackSoil today announced that it has provided $4.5+ Mn of growth capital to three distinguished startups. The startups are namely Blu-Smart Mobility-an electric shared mobility platform, BigHaat-an agri inputs digital marketplace platform and LoanTap- a fintech offering personal loans.

Commenting on the same, Ankur Bansal, Co-Founder and Director of BlackSoil said, “All our new partners have shown tremendous resilience and bounced back from the pandemic to enter a new phase of growth. We are happy to support them and hope our capital will contribute to help them reach the next level. They have unique value propositions and business models which have garnered the support of marquee institutional investors and made them an attractive investment opportunity for BlackSoil as well. We are excited to take exposures in these high growth sectors via these investments, with Blu-Smart and BigHaat being BlackSoil’s foremost bet in the sustainability focused segments namely e-mobility and agri-tech.”

Blu-Smart Mobility is a ride hailing platform that operates on all electric cars only, founded by Anmol Jaggi and Punit Goyal, covering the entire value chain of smart mobility, smart charging & smart parking. Company was founded in 2019 & operates in Delhi NCR region. It has set up 10 charging hubs which have a total of 250+ charging guns, has a fleet of 1,000+ all-electric vehicles and has cumulatively recorded 1+ Mn trips till date. Blu-Smart is backed by an array of marquee equity investors like bp Ventures (Investment arm of British Petroleum), Mayfield Fund, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalyst & several sophisticated HNIs, having raised $36 Mn till date.  

BigHaat is a Bangalore-based Agritech company which provides integrated digital-first agriculture supply chain solutions and empowers farmers with accessibility to high-quality agri-inputs along with crop advisory service and provides output market linkage services to these farmers. Founded in 2015, the company applies science, data, and technology to provide personalized technical crop advisory in vernacular content to farmers. Along with providing access to over 7,000 SKUs of wide range high quality inputs and catering to farmers in 13,000+ pin codes of the country. It leverages its deep entrenched farmer network for its output market linkage business where the company is focused only on high value crops like spices and selected commodities in grains. Recently it raised ~$15 Mn from JM Financial and existing investors Beyond Next Ventures. Other investors of the company include Ankur Capital and RockStud Capital who have supported the Company through multiple rounds of investment.

LoanTap Credit Products is a homegrown, hyper-growing digital lender with its own NBFC, committed to delivering fast, flexible, friendly personal loans to its audience. Founded in 2016, Loantap is a Pune-based, RBI-registered, fin-tech NBFC, with an aim to provide a seamless consumer experience from application to disbursal. LoanTap offers an array of digital lending solutions wherein the ticket sizes range from $400 to $20,000 with tenors typically ranging from 12 to 60 months. Currently, their operations are widely spread across 22+ cities and use its proprietary underwriting algorithms for ensuring a loan approval TAT of fewer than 2 days. Company’s tech platform ‘LT-Flow’ enables lenders to source, share risk (co-lend), underwrite, plug-in capital, and manage loans. With the help of LT Flow, entities can easily start digital KYC, NACH, and agreement, along with AI powered credit decisioning, thus seamlessly operate end-to-end digital lending.