loan wala.com

Loan Origination Market Heating Up; Komli Launches LoanRaja.com

Probably this could be a wrong time to launch an online loan lead generation company like ApnaLoan.com. Interest rates are at the peak, and everyone is deferring plans to take on more debt. But that will not stop new such companies from entering the market. Online ad network Komli has launched LoanRaja.com, which collects loan leads from consumers and pass on to financial services companies at a fee. Early this month, BharatMatrimony (BM) Group also launched a company in this space - called LoanWala.com. This is the sixth website of BM, a consumer internet company funded by Yahoo and Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund Canaan Partners.

I asked Komli’s CEO Amar Goel why the company entered the consumer internet space through LoanRaja, while Komli is an advertising network that brings together publishers and advertisers. According to Goel, a good number of his advertising clients are financial services companies, and by launching LoanRaja, he will also get to sell them leads and not just eyeballs. “We are a marketing services company, after all.” Komli was recently funded by Helion Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

While LoanRaja and LoanWala are the latest entrants, the space already has two other prominent players. Sometime last year, a Delhi-based startup had launched Deal4loans.com, which claims to be an online loan comparison site. Deal4Loans is, however, yet to make a splash about their presence.

But India’s first loan lead generation company was ApnaLoan.com, a product of 1999-2000, but now jointly owned by its founder Harshvardhan Roongta and Sequoia Capital India who bought out the earlier investors in the company. ApnaLoan - which sells leads for all financial products like credit cards and not just loans - had gone through a rough patch post-dotcom bust. The company is now back in the game. The loan origination market (including insurance products) is estimated at about Rs 1,500 crore currently. As for loans, the lead generation commission could be anywhere between 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent, while for health and auto insurance products it could be 5 per cent.