A common belief is that an individual with a successful track record in a corporate environment and/or education from some of the most prestigious educational institutes always translates to this person developing into a successful entrepreneur. This urban myth sadly isn’t always accurate, as illustrated by Finomena.
Launched sometime around 2015 in the Banglore region by Riddhi Mittal and Abhishek Garg, Finomena desired to revolutionize the way every consumer thinks about finance by providing access to flexible credit, for a large segment of India’s young demographic who traditionally did not have access to such financial support.
In other words, they made it easier for borrowers without credit scores to get small ticket loans with relatively small tenures. The foundations of this business idea was developed due to a casual conversation between Riddhi Mittal and Abhishek Garg (who met through a mutual friend) about the issue of loans and how certain
individuals with a decent academic and/or professional background regularly have a hard time obtaining one.
Finomena raised an undisclosed amount in March 2016 from Matrix Partners and several prominent angel investors, with the company being the only Indian fintech venture to make it onto "International Innovator of the Year award" by LendIt USA 2017, additionally both co-founders were featured in Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2017. Despite its national (and international) acclaim, the cracks in its foundation started to show as Finomena might have been seen as a great idea on paper; however reality was a completely different story. The founders had drastically overestimated the market size for such an industry with the idea not exactly being “original” (several similar companies exist overseas) and this market having a really low barrier of entry, resulting in fierce competition being developed (via banks relaxing the criteria to obtain a loan) resulting in drastically reduced cash input.
Due to extremely low revenues, Finomena ceased all operations in August 2017. One should always remember that a startup with cash-flow is just an expensive idea, and a successful track record in a corporate environment and/or education from some of the most prestigious educational institutes doesn’t always translate to entrepreneurial success.
List of investors in Finomena:
- Matrix Partners
- Kaushal Aggarwal
- Harshvardhan Chamria
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