MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Light Microfinance, IppoPay Partner to Offer Digital Lending to MSMEs in Rural India

Two Indian firms, Light Microfinance and IppoPay, have announced they will work together to offer digital lending services to micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in “rural and semi-urban micro-markets” in four states: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

Light Microfinance is a non-banking finance company operating 125 branches in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan as of September 2023. Founded in 2009, the company offers loans, primarily to women with low incomes living outside of cities. For the fiscal year ending March 2022, it reported a return on assets of 0.53 percent and total assets of INR 10.2 billion (USD 123 million).

IppoPay is a privately held company that is based in the city of Chennai and was founded in 2020. It offers digital financial solutions to small businesses, including via its IppoPay app. The app allows retailers to accept customer payments via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a system run by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that enables fund transfers via QR codes. IppoPay also offers an application programming interface (API) through which its partners can automate various processes.

By James Stevenson, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Live Mint article
https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/light-microfinance-ippopay-to-offer-digital-loans-to-msmes-11692188072067.html

Light Microfinance homepage
https://www.lightfinance.com/

Light Microfinance LinkedIn page
https://in.linkedin.com/company/light-finance

Light Microfinance Annual Report, FY 2021-2022
https://lightfinance.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Small-Annual-Report-2021-22-New.pdf

IppoPay homepage
https://www.ippopay.com/

IppoPay app
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ippopay.store

NPCI profile on UPI
https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-overview

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