Currency Ban Impact | Professionals scramble to micro loan start-ups

At 11pm on November 8 night, Akshay Mehrotra, Co-Founder, EarlySalary, was biting his nails, looking at almost 90% of his 2000 users borrowing money from his platform in a click. Within 9 hours into November 9, EarlySalary had exhausted their loan limits. At Cashe, repeat and new users have borrowed as much as twice the daily average.

“This is just the beginning. We are expecting to see a big jump in the number of users and the total loans taken in the upcoming weeks,” said Raman Kumar, Founder, Cashe.

Start-ups like EarlySalary, Cashe, InstaPaisa lend to working professionals who may not have a credit record. Such startups ask for basic documents like salary slips and proof of employment and residence and offer loans which can be repaid as EMIs or through an automatic debit in the salary account.

Mehrotra and his team are gearing up for the next few weeks. “The demand we saw from existing and new users since last night was unprecedented. We are in talks and are making arrangements to tackle this ups”urge as we speak,” he said. From a steady stream of 20-30 new users registering on the platform everyday, the startup has seen 200 new users since the PM’s announcement on November 8 night.

EarlySalary is rolling out a new credit option for users through which credit can be availed upto twice the usual loan limit. Repayment can be made through EMIs.

“The credit option is live and we want to roll it out to all our users. We are banking on people making use of the credit option to make purchases,” said Mehrotra.

Source: Times of India