Decentro, a leading fintech infrastructure company, has announced its expansion in the lending infrastructure space through its first-ever acquisition of Neowise. The acquisition, executed in a combination of cash and stock, includes the acquisition of all assets, mainly its advanced collection suite, and the integration of the acquired company as a wholly owned subsidiary of Decentro’s India arm. This strategic move strengthens Decentro’s position in India’s digital lending ecosystem, allowing them to offer an end-to-end embedded banking & finance stack. With this acquisition, Decentro demonstrates its commitment to innovative solutions for stakeholders in the BFSI sector. As its first-ever acquisition since inception, this milestone reinforces Decentro’s reputation as a forward-thinking and comprehensive financial infrastructure provider.
According to the latest RBI data, the Indian banking system’s credit grew 16.1 percent year-on-year (YoY) as of February 10, 2023, to reach INR 134.17 trillion. The rising demand for credit, greater financial awareness, and expectations for a seamless experience have compelled lenders to adopt digitisation. This can be achieved by automating their debt recovery and collection pipeline while allowing customers to streamline and manage their workflows.
Neowise has emerged as a disruptive force in the collections industry, offering innovative solutions that cater to the pressing need for a robust and scalable collections infrastructure. Over the past year, Neowise has been at the forefront, providing a comprehensive suite of full-stack tools and leveraging manual workforce expertise to meet the ever-growing demand. Neowise has also integrated its CaaS (Collections as a Service) product with multiple licensed NBFCs and large Fintechs, solving the last-mile challenge in the lending lifecycle. With automation and customisation catering to different customer buckets, Neowise handles the end-to-end collections processes on behalf of the lender.
Decentro strategically integrates its banking and payments network through the acquisition, capitalising on the unique solution offered by Neowise while keeping its team independent, with full access to its resources. By seamlessly bridging the gap between lenders and borrowers, this acquisition seeks to elevate the lending experience for businesses and their clientele, addressing intricate challenges within the financial industry.
“We observed a crucial aspect of streamlining loan repayments when we introduced our Digital Lending API stack. Moreover, the collections process for numerous NBFCs and lenders relied heavily on manual operations,” stated Rohit Taneja, Founder and CEO of Decentro. “While developing solutions internally have been our forte since our inception, we recognised the need to establish a deeper partnership that enhances our suite and empowers existing industry players. Neowise, with its comprehensive loan collections suite, seamlessly aligns with our vision of empowering the lending sector.”
In considering the broader perspective, Mr. Taneja added, “We firmly believe that the future of India’s Fintech industry lies in integrating financial and banking capabilities into various enterprises, and this acquisition perfectly reflects that vision. With a highly skilled and proficient team specialising in loan collections, we are enthusiastic about addressing this critical aspect and augmenting our infrastructure alongside the two talented founders of Neowise – Rohit and Siddarth.”
Reflecting on this strategic acquisition, Rohit Ramachandran, CEO and Co-Founder of Neowise Technologies, added, “This acquisition by Decentro marks an exciting milestone for both companies. It combines Neowise’s expertise in debt recovery technology with Decentro’s comprehensive full-stack payments and banking APIs, which enable Banks, Fintechs, and NBFCs to digitise their workflows across the entire value chain. This partnership allows us to tap into Decentro’s extensive expertise and reach. We look forward to scaling along with the Decentro team”.
Decentro is experiencing significant business growth, with a substantial increase in monthly API transactions, reaching an impressive 14 – 15 million. The company is hitting a quarter-on-quarter growth rate of nearly 50% across multiple sectors, including consumer platforms, Non-Banking Financial Firms (NBFCs), Loan Service Providers (LSPs), Prepaid Issuers (PPIs), Neobanks, and Wealth Managers.
Furthermore, Decentro recently closed its Series A funding round in 2022, securing an investment of $4.7 million. Renowned investors such as Rapyd Ventures, Cathexis Ventures, and Uncorrelated Ventures based in California, US, invested in the latest round.