{Startup watch: BASIC Home Loan} Solving Tier-2,3 city housing problem by increasing digitised affordable loan penetration for the underserved

Born during the pandemic, this FinTech is solving the problem of housing in India by digitising home loans and increasing affordable loan penetration for middle and low-income households.

According to Homeless World Cup data, 17% of the world’s homeless population stays in India and India has a shortage of 18.8 million houses to support the current population base. 73 million families lack access to decent housing.

The overall distribution of credit in India remains primitive with various issues on both supply and demand sides

“The major reason behind this problem is not the unavailability of credit,” says Atul Monga, CEO and Co-founder of BASIC Home Loan, a 2020 startup aiming to make home loans a faster and stress-free process.

The CEO spoke to The Tech Panda in an interview about their growth story and startup journey.

“It’s rather the distribution of credit, especially in economically weaker sections and low-income households. The overall distribution of credit in India remains primitive with various issues on both supply and demand sides,” he adds.

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BASIC Home Loan is working to digitise home loans and increase affordable loan penetration for middle and low-income households. The startup is working with more than 20 banks, HFCs, and Neo HFCs to make home loans accessible to all. Within one year of their journey, they have helped 2000+ customers to avail home loans through a phygital approach.

“Our vision is to solve the problem of housing in India by increasing affordable home loans penetration in underserved LIG and MIG segments especially in tier 2 and 3 cities

What They Do

BASIC Home Loan is developing an automated platform for home loan lending in India. It aims to provide consumers with end-to-end fulfilment, through technology for faster loan disbursements. The company’s vision is to change the way India finances its affordable homes.

“We are building India’s first Neo-Housing Finance Company (Neo-HFC) to increase penetration of affordable home loans. Creating value by utilising technology and product innovation to convert fixed branch costs to variable costs along with providing a convenient customer experience,” says Monga.

The products the startup has built either digitises or automates home loans, improves customer convenience, or promote sales efficiency and cost reduction.

All technology and product development at BASIC is done with a single principle in mind that it should be ‘built for purpose’

“All technology and product development at BASIC is done with a single principle in mind that it should be ‘built for purpose’,” he adds.

The company is forging its technology, often with first time usage of certain software. They make use of Omnichannel CRM and Product Eligibility Matrix (PEM), which qualifies based on both customer profile and property profile, an industry first.

Their Dynamic Document Rule Engine improves agent advice to customers and brings operational efficiency in agent workflows, another industry first.

They have also developed automated backend for agents and Android applications.

Origin & Inspiration

The startup has been Co-founded by Atul Monga, Kalyan Josyula, and Devashish Dalmiya. The trio carries the experience of building ventures in the FinTech space and has worked with companies such as Policybazaar, Ola, Lazada, Credit Suisse, HDFC Life, and Wadi.com in the past.

Their aim is to automate the affordable home loan space for mid and low income households with the aim of facilitating the loan disbursement process.

The Indian mortgage market is still primarily offline given regulatory and operational constraints, and major disruption can be made using technology

“We realised that the affordable housing market has huge potential, yet it is ignored by ecosystem players. In addition, the Indian mortgage market is still primarily offline given regulatory and operational constraints, and major disruption can be made using technology,” says IIT Delhi Graduate.

Monga has also been an Intrapreneur at three FinTechs as well as an investment banker, who helped raise capital for Rubique Technolgies, Dogspot, and Disha Solar.

Growth Story

The company is backed by Picus Capital, a Germany-headquartered early-stage technology investment firm.

Monga says they are mortgage 2.0 type operators, digitising home loans value chain. Unlike web aggregators, they’re end to end fulfilment focussed. They’re reaching out to the underserved demand in tire 2, 3 cities, building on complete variable costs, which provides positive unit economics. They’re also building pan-India distribution through agents, with future upside potential in terms of own lending and collections.

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In the 12 months of the platform going live, it has helped 3000+ customers with access to finance for buying their homes. Their current traction includes 20 bank tie-ups, penetration into 300 districts (25 states), and disbursements to the tune of INR 310 crores.

“We aim to service about 10 lakh customers over the next three years with combined disbursements of INR 50,000 crores,” Monga says proudly.