UGRO CAPITAL Investment Thesis

India has a $300 billion+ SME credit availability problem, so there is a strong market demand for SMB loans. UGro Capital aims to solve this problem through deep sector specialization, leveraging the best practices of traditional NBFs and the modern fintech providers and addressing the ‘needs’ of rating agencies and liability providers.

U Gro Capital is a technology enabled, highly specialized, small business lending platform that solves the challenges for traditional lenders such as difficult to understand businesses/cashflows, fragmented set of customers, high cost of customer acquisition, high dependence on the ecosystem and lack of data. U Gro Capital focuses on 8 sector specialization and 38 sub sectors. The company created 8 sector specific scorecards after analyzing 8 million loans. The scorecards can accurately evaluate loans efficiently.

Elevate invested in U Gro Capital because it is positioned to better bridge the SME credit gap than traditional NBFCs and banks because it is more nimble than traditional banks. The investor syndicate consists of the most astute financial sector private equity investors in India. The company adopts technologies and sector focused expertise to better evaluate the loans. Additionally, U Gro Capital has an experienced management team. Founder Mr. Shachindra Nath has over 25 years of experience in financial service sector and holds the “CEO of the Year” Award at the Asia Banking, Financial Services & Insurance Excellence Awards.

Elevate invested into U Gro capital pre-IPO, in Q2 2018; U Gro subsequently IPO’d on the Bombay Stock Exchange in October 2018. The company has traded above the IPO price throughout its existence as a publicly traded company.