Elevating digital-native enterprises with fintech protection.

In Pune, India, there are over 10 lakh digital-first businesses focusing on web services, but financing remains a significant challenge. Traditional banking, which prioritizes physical assets and historical financial performance, poses hurdles for asset-light, data-rich new economy companies. Venture capital and venture debt options are limited, with less than 3% of digital-first businesses securing venture capital and less than 0.5% opting for venture debt. To address this gap, three engineers from IIT Bombay—Abhiroop Medhekar, Atul Khichariya, and Saurav Swaroop—established Velocity in early 2020. Velocity provides collateral-free loans to digitally native businesses, catering to the unique financial needs of new-age ventures that struggle to access traditional funding sources. Leveraging technology, Velocity assesses creditworthiness by tapping into digital data sources, offering three products: revenue-based financing, fixed EMI, and overdraft. The innovative revenue-based financing model ties loan repayment to a percentage of monthly sales. Velocity has raised ₹250 crore in equity funding, with Valar Ventures as a major investor, marking their first investment in India.