Datacultr, digital debt collections and risk management start-up, has raised $1m in its seed funding round led by London-based Sturgeon Capital, along with Seedstars International LLC, NP Consulting LLC & Startupbootcamp Fintech.

The startup was founded by Neel Juriasingani and Sujoy Ghosh in 2020 in Dubai. Datacultr is a global, credit recovery operating system for high-risk lending, that drives collection efficiencies, reduces delinquencies, and Non-Performing Loans. Datacultr allows lenders such as banks, non-banking financial institutions, micro-financing Institutions, FinTechs, and telecom operators to give out unsecured loans, at a lower risk, to unbanked and under-served.

Datacultr has the vision to bring more people under the umbrella of financial inclusion; the platform drives credit decisizing and repayments, thus enabling banks and other lending companies to lend to this segment profitably.

“Built on strong market insights by an agile team, we have developed a comprehensive and localized tech platform now live in 9 countries with over 600,000 loans secured on the platform to date.” He further added, “Datacultr is delivering outstanding results on key metrics like payment defaults, NPLs, and collection efficiency and the response from our customers has been overwhelming,” Neel Juriasingani, Datacultr co-founder, said.

Over the past 2 years, Datacultr has onboarded lenders in South Asia as well as telecom operators in South East Asia & Africa, and recently they have signed up banks and FinTechs in new markets of Central Asia, South-East Asia, Egypt, and Mexico.

“Datacultr is solving a key problem that affects the lives of millions of people in emerging markets that have no access to financial services due to lack of reliable data. It is very easy to lend money, however, it is much more challenging to get it back, especially from first-time borrowers. Through sophisticated techniques based on behavioral change principles, Datacultr educates these individuals and has a meaningful impact on their future by bringing them into the formal financial sector. We believe that Datacultr has a truly global, scalable product that can be implemented across emerging markets for the benefit of millions of people”, said Robin Butler, Investment Director at Sturgeon Capital. 

With the newly acquired funds Datacultr aims to expand its sales team and bolster its technology team, as well as launch a new solution meant specifically for the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) segment.

“With its experienced team, Datacultr is not only opening up a $200bn market opportunity for financial institutions in emerging markets but is also enabling them to include those unbanked customers that have traditionally been excluded from mainstream financial services. As of Q4 2021, Datacultr achieved a 127% growth (QoQ) in the number of loans secured on its platform, amounting to over $76mn worth of active loans,” Charlie Graham-Brown, Partner of Seedstars International stated.