$7 Million Raised by Kinara Capital to Empower Women Entrepreneurs

By: WE Staff | Tuesday, 9 March 2021

$7 Million Raised by Kinara Capital to Empower Women Entrepreneurs

Kinara Capital, a Bangalore-based fintech company that provides loans to micro, small, and medium enterprises, has secured $7 million in investment from Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). The capital raised will go toward extending Kinara’sHerVikasprogram to over 2,500 women-owned tiny businesses.

Launched last year, Her Vikas provides business loans to accelerate the financial inclusion of women entrepreneurs in India. The program enables their “Vikas” or progress with an automatic upfront discount of 1 percent on interest costs on collateral-free business loans between 100,000 rupees (US$1,363.2) and 3 million rupees (US$40,898.6).

According to Kinara Capital, women-owned businesses comprise about two-hundredth of 60 million micro, small, and medium enterprises in India. The firm seeks to tackle general gender bias by defying common practices, like requiring the presence of a male family member whenever women apply for a loan.

Kinara Capital is a non-banking financial firm that drives the financial inclusion of small entrepreneurs through collateral-free business loans. It was founded in 2011, by Hardika Shah.

“Empowering women has a strong impact on improving the quality of life for families, and achieving gender parity can add 27% to India’s GDP,” said Hardika Shah, Founder & CEO, Kinara Capital.

Based in Bangalore, the corporate operates a hundred and ten branches in over ninety cities in Asian countries and claims to have disbursed over twenty billion rupees ($272.6 million) across fifty-six thousand collateral-free tiny businesses loans.

The latest investment comes at the heels of Kinara Capital raising $10 million in funding from IndusInd Bank earlier this year.