Olyv Raises $23 Million Series B to Expand Beyond Digital Lending

Indian fintech Olyv has secured $23 million in a Series B round led by The Fundamentum Partnership, the investment firm co‑founded by Nandan Nilekani. The round also included participation from SMBC Asia Rising Fund, the venture capital arm of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. The company plans to use the capital to broaden its product suite and scale operations.

Founded in 2016 by Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Singh, and Jayant Upadhya, Olyv operates as a digital lending and financial services platform focused on India’s underbanked middle‑income population. The company was previously known as SmartCoin and rebranded to Olyv in 2024 as it expanded beyond short‑term microloans.

Product Expansion and Traction

Olyv’s current offerings include personal loans, gold savings products, and credit health tools. The company states it has disbursed 7 million loans and facilitated transactions worth roughly ₹10,000 crore. It provides loans of up to ₹5 lakh in partnership with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) such as Poonawalla Fincorp, InCred, Northern Arc, and PayU.

Olyv aims to be a full‑stack financial partner for India’s middle‑income segment.

The fresh capital will support expansion into adjacent segments including insurance distribution, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services, and business loans. It will also fund geographic expansion and technology upgrades.

Strategic Shift Toward Financial Ecosystems

The stated objective is to position Olyv as a full‑stack financial partner for customers entering formal credit systems for the first time. This shift reflects a broader industry trend where lenders are attempting to move from single‑product credit providers to integrated financial ecosystems to increase customer lifetime value and reduce acquisition costs.

To date, Olyv reports having raised $25 million in equity and $100 million in debt from investors including Lightrock and Unicorn India Ventures. The company aims to reach 100 million users and surpass $1 billion in assets under management by FY29. These targets place it among a cohort of Indian fintech firms pursuing scale as a strategy against tightening margins in unsecured lending.

Sector Context and Structural Drivers

The fundraising comes amid continued investor interest in Indian fintech. Industry reports indicate that the sector attracted approximately $2.5 billion in funding in 2025 across more than 100 deals, with lending technology accounting for a significant share. India’s fintech revenue is widely projected to grow substantially by 2030, with digital lending expected to represent more than half of sector revenues.

Rising credit penetration, particularly in consumption‑led unsecured products such as personal and gold‑backed loans, combined with the expansion of digital public infrastructure such as UPI, have lowered distribution costs and widened access.

Outlook: Scale with Responsibility

Olyv’s strategy reflects the tension between growth and regulatory scrutiny. As regulators increase oversight of unsecured lending practices, lenders are forced to place greater emphasis on underwriting discipline.

Growth is framed as inclusion, financed through increasingly sophisticated capital structures. Whether full‑stack positioning translates into durable profitability will depend on risk management, funding costs, and regulatory alignment in a market where access to credit is expanding rapidly.