Filipino Lending Startup Raises P230 Million in Pre-Seed Round

Philippines-based lending company ProCredit, which targets SMEs, has closed its pre-seed funding round with $4.1 million (around P229.79 million), the company announced Monday (February 26). Funding was led by Integra Partners, with participation from the Menardo Jimenez Family Office, M Venture Partners (MVP), Cento Ventures, Gobi Partners (Gobi-Core Philippine Fund), and several local angel investors. 

ProCredit is a fintech startup that is part of a lending group funded by venture capitalists and business family offices in Singapore and the Philippines. The company likes to tout that it was founded by a team with a combined 50 years of experience in SME lending in emerging markets, in well-known financial institutions like Citigroup, Standard Chartered, ANZ, and the Asian Development Bank. Its goal is to become one of the largest SME lenders in the Philippines.

CEO Adnan Agha has 34 years of experience in operations and risk management experience in senior roles at Citibank, ADB, and other large financial institutions. Chief Lending Officer Mitra Dwaipayan, meanwhile, has held senior roles in multiple emerging countries such as Vietnam and India and was most recently the COO of an SME-focused bank in Cambodia.

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What sets ProCredit apart from other lenders is how it employs “credit-first client engagements, a rules-based underwriting and portfolio management architecture, and flexible product offerings incorporating risk-based pricing.” The company is also powered by a proprietary technology back-end that significantly reduces operating costs and expenses and improves customer experience.

ProCredit says the fresh funds will allow it to expand its loan book through organic and inorganic growth and raise additional capital. It is also considering expansion into the banking sector, given the founders' extensive experience managing lending operations in regulated banks across Asia, Africa, and the US, which would allow it to offer a fuller suite of lending solutions to its mid-market SME customers.

"We are thrilled to add ProCredit to our portfolio,” said Chris Kaptein. “We rarely see such an experienced and thoughtful founding team positioned against such a large, underserved market opportunity. ProCredit will play a significant role in providing improved access to credit to the economy's most important sector.

“We are confident that our investment in ProCredit will further Integra’s mission of investing where profits and purpose converge for a win-win for all parties,” he added.

“We are very familiar with the lending gap in the SME segment,” said Joel Jimenez of the Menardo Jimenez Family Office, which invests across different sectors of the Philippines' economy, focusing on real estate, financial services, and agriculture. “While others

are focused on consumer lending and deposit acquisition, we think ProCredit is well placed to become the financial services partner of choice to the SME segment.”

“Eight in 10 formal loans are channeled to large corporations in the Philippines, leaving 15 million SMEs and workers with little access to traditional finance,” said Mayank Parekh, founding partner at M Venture Partners. “MVP is proud to support Adnan and the ProCredit Team in their mission to unlock financing for underserved SMEs. We were impressed with the quality of the team, focused business model, and proprietary underwriting technology to drive financial inclusion.”