L&L advises Sequoia and Lightspeed in their USD 90 million Series A round of investment in CredAvenue

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LE Desk

New Delhi, October 4, 2021: L&L Partners recently advised SCI Growth Investments III (Sequoia) and Lightspeed India Partners III, LLC and Lightspeed Venture Partners XIII Mauritius in the recent Series A round of investment in CredAvenue Private Limited.

CredAvenue is the company engaged in the business of operating a technology based infrastructure platform for discovery of loans, connecting borrowers, issuers, lenders and investors, and providing portfolio and risk management monitoring and other forms of support services to borrowers, issuers, lenders and investors.

Its offering includes a wide range of debt products under five platforms — CredLoan (loan platform), CredCoLend (co-lending platform for banks and NBFCs), Plutus (Bond Platform), CredSCF (Supply Chain andTrade Financing solutions) and CredPool (Pool Platform for end-to-end securitization and portfolio buyouts).

The present investment was undertaken in the form of primary investment in the equity shares and compulsorily convertible preference sharesof the Series A funding round undertaken by CredAvenue, L&L Partners said in a press statement.

The investment round was led by Sequoia along with participation from Lightspeed, TVS Capital Funds, Lightrock India, CRED and Stride Ventures amounting for a total investment of approximately USD 90 Million. This is the largest ever Series A round in India and ascribes the year-old fintech start-up CredAvenue a valuation of USD 410 Million, the Law Firm said.

The Law Firm acted as legal counsel to Sequoia and Lightspeed and was involved in reviewing, negotiating and finalizing of the transaction documents, including the share subscriptionagreement, shareholders’ agreement, side letter agreement, disclosure letter and also coordinating with and advising the clients on various aspects under Indian law.

The L&L team comprised of Navin Syiem and Nitin Gera, partners in the firm’s Corporate, M&A and PE practice, senior associate Shruti Barua and associates Sameer Deval and Mehar Kaur.

Since the deal involved primary investments by multiple investors, the team was involved in advising on the overall structuring of the transaction including advising on the rights of Sequoia in the Company. This required multiple rounds of negotiations with the CredAvenue teamand the other investors to arrive at the most suitable structure for the primary investment and to successfully negotiate Sequoia’s and Lightspeed’s rights in the shareholders’ agreement, the statement said.

Founded in 2020, CredAvenue has already facilitated more than USD 9 Billion worth of transactions on its platform, on-boarding over 1,500 institutional borrowers and more than 750 investors touching over a million end retail borrowers. CredAvenue has over 350 employees spanning across different verticals – technology, sales, marketing, strategy, HR and it expects to double its headcount to 700 by the end of financial year 2022.

The Company is planning to use the current funding towards expanding product capabilities and ramping up the platform’s technology and data science infrastructure. The Company aims to invest heavily in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence over the next few months to significantly improve and expand its product offerings, across each of its sub-platforms. The debt platform is also planning to double its head count to 700 by the end of financial year 2022 besides looking at global expansion and inorganic growth through strategic acquisitions.

The transaction was particularly challenging as rights and obligations of various investors were required to be accommodated in a series of transactions. Hence, the deal was structured in a distinct manner to accommodate the interests of all the parties involved in the transaction, said the statement.

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