Millions of small businesses in India can process a UPI payment in seconds but wait weeks for a working capital loan. That mismatch between digital speed and financial access is exactly the gap GetVantage has spent six years trying to close, and its latest funding round shows just how far the fintech has come in doing that.
GetVantage was founded in Mumbai in 2019 by Bhavik Vasa and Amit Srivastava, initially as a revenue-based financing platform a model where businesses repay capital as a share of future revenue rather than through fixed EMIs. That structure appealed to founders who didn’t want to give up equity or commit to rigid repayment schedules tied to a traditional bank loan.
- Original model: Revenue-based, equity-free growth capital for startups and D2C brands
- Regulatory milestone: Obtained an NBFC licence from the RBI in 2023 for its lending arm, GetGrowth Capital
- Funding raised before this round: Over $41 million (roughly Rs 340 crore) from investors including Chiratae Ventures, Varanium, InCred and Sony Innovation Fund
- Current focus: An API-led “Capital Gateway” that lets e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and logistics companies embed financing directly into their merchant ecosystems
That last shift is the more significant one. Rather than lending directly to individual businesses one at a time, GetVantage has been building infrastructure that plugs into other platforms the same way a payment gateway lets any website accept online payments, except this one lets a platform’s merchants access working capital.
Inside the Rs 63 Crore Series A1 Round
GetVantage’s newest raise is structured as hybrid capital, combining equity and debt, and it comes with some heavyweight names attached:
- Amount raised: Rs 63 crore
- Round type: Series A1, described internally as a “Scale Capital” round
- Total committed funding capacity: Now over Rs 700 crore, including debt lines from partner financial institutions
- Round anchor: Rajeev Ahuja, a 30-year banking veteran and former Managing Director of RBL Bank, investing through operator-led firm SanRaj Group
- Co-lead: SanRaj Group’s Rajdip Gupta, alongside continued backing from Chiratae Ventures, Varanium Fintech Fund and VCMint
What makes this round notable isn’t just the amount Rs 63 crore is modest by fintech standards but the multiplier effect. GetVantage says the fresh equity and debt combination is expected to unlock several hundred crores more in operational debt capital from its lending partners, since committed equity often acts as the trigger that lets NBFCs and banks extend larger credit lines.
Why This Round Matters: The Shift From Lender to Infrastructure Provider
For most of its early years, GetVantage competed in a crowded field of revenue-based financing startups, Klub, Velocity, and Efficient Capital Labs among them all pitching a similar equity-free alternative to venture debt. That market got tougher as growth-stage funding slowed and more platforms chased the same base of high-growth D2C and SaaS companies.
The Capital Gateway model changes the competitive equation. Instead of sourcing borrowers one deal at a time, GetVantage is positioning itself as the financing layer that other platforms plug into B2B marketplaces, logistics networks, and e-commerce ecosystems that already have thousands of merchants needing working capital. If a platform embeds GetVantage’s API, every merchant on it becomes a potential borrower without GetVantage having to acquire them individually.
That’s a more defensible, higher-margin business than direct lending alone, and it explains why an institutional banker like Rajeev Ahuja was willing to personally anchor the round rather than simply write a cheque through a fund.
The MSME Credit Gap GetVantage Is Targeting
India’s small business credit shortfall is one of the most-cited numbers in Indian fintech, and for good reason. Various estimates put the gap the difference between what MSMEs need in formal credit and what they actually receive anywhere between Rs 20 lakh crore and Rs 30 lakh crore, depending on the methodology used. GetVantage cites the higher end of that range.
The reasons the gap persists are structural:
- Collateral requirements: Most micro and small businesses don’t own the fixed assets banks typically demand as security
- Thin credit histories: Many MSMEs are new to formal credit, with no repayment track record for traditional bureaus to score
- Informal reliance: A large share of small businesses still depend on moneylenders or informal credit sources, often at steep costs
- Standardised underwriting: Bank loan products are frequently built for larger, asset-heavy companies, not the cash-flow patterns of small, digital-first merchants
This is precisely the segment fintechs like GetVantage try to serve, using transaction data, GST filings and sales history instead of collateral to assess creditworthiness an approach regulators have been actively encouraging as they push banks and NBFCs toward more inclusive, data-driven lending models.
What GetVantage’s Founder and Investors Are Saying
Bhavik Vasa, GetVantage’s founder, framed the round as validation of the company’s shift from a niche lender into broader financial infrastructure, describing the ambition to let small businesses access working capital as seamlessly as they already accept digital payments.
Rajeev Ahuja, joining as an investor, pointed to the scale of the challenge ahead, arguing that closing India’s MSME credit gap will require the kind of technology-first infrastructure GetVantage has built rather than incremental fixes to traditional banking models.
Rajdip Gupta of SanRaj Group, who co-led the round, emphasised the operator lens the firm brings, noting the friction small businesses typically face in accessing flexible growth capital and framing GetVantage’s API-driven approach as a meaningful shift for digital merchant ecosystems.
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Challenges and Opportunities Ahead
Scaling an embedded finance model isn’t without risk. GetVantage now depends heavily on partnering with large platforms; if a major marketplace or logistics partner switches to a competing embedded-finance provider or builds lending capability in-house, that’s a meaningful chunk of distribution gone at once. The company will also need to keep underwriting quality tight as it scales volume across more platforms with different merchant profiles, since one bad partnership could affect asset quality across the book.
On the opportunity side, GetVantage is moving with regulatory tailwinds rather than against them. The government has been vocal about wanting customised, cash-flow-based credit solutions for MSMEs rather than one-size-fits-all bank products, and the Reserve Bank of India has been pushing co-lending and account-aggregator-based underwriting both trends that favour tech-first platforms like GetVantage over traditional branch-based lending.
What’s Next for GetVantage
The company has said it plans to announce several new seller-financing partnerships with digital ecosystems in the coming months, which will be the real test of whether the Capital Gateway model scales the way GetVantage expects. Each new partnership adds a fresh pool of merchants to underwrite and a fresh signal to the market about whether platforms are genuinely choosing to embed financing rather than build it themselves.
For now, the Rs 63 crore round gives GetVantage runway to prove the model at scale. Whether it becomes the “payment gateway of credit” that Vasa describes will depend less on this funding round and more on how many platforms are willing to hand over their merchant relationships to a third-party financing layer a bet that, if it pays off, could reshape how millions of India’s smallest businesses access capital.
