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Bhuvan RustagiCo-founder and COO at Lendbox Published On: Monday, January 11, 2016 Views 6437

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"Listen before you speak, ignore the haters, work hard, be kind and don't forget to laugh and help people grow and you will grow with them and everything else will just fall into place."

Bhuvan is a young and energetic investment and strategy professional with a wide array of skills at his disposal. He has ample expertise in financial modeling and evaluation, Operations management, Corporate finance, Investment analysis, Start-up management and Strategy formulation. He is a people’s person who has the capabilities to easily break down problems and execute by careful planning.

He has an MBA (IE Business School, Spain) and an ACCA with 5+ years of management and finance experience in PwC Africa (Assurance Consultant) and as a Mergers and Acquisitions Specialist with Alvarez and Marsal in Mumbai. He never feels shy to ask questions and understands the fact that one is always learning and must always keep an open mind and be adaptable especially in today’s business environment. His latest venture called Lendbox is a leading Peer-to-Peer lending platform for India. Bhuwan co-founded this startup with an aim for making it a one-stop solution for all financial troubles faced by anyone.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

Lendbox is an e-lending platform where creditworthy borrowers can transact on short to medium term personal or business loans through retail or institutional investors. We are primarily a P2P Lending platform which is essentially a credit marketplace which matches risk assessed borrowers with individual or institutional investors based on each investor’s risk appetite.

Each borrower is put through a detailed and rigorous underwriting process where his risk and intent to repay is assessed through a financial, social and residential background check. Lendbox’s proprietary risk algorithm takes into account both traditional and non-traditional data points and learning and recommendation engine ensures that the borrowers are assessed on a more holistic basis and are matched with the most appropriate investors either at a retail or on an institutional level.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

We witnessed informal lending taking place within our own family and friends’ circle and realized that this can definitely be done a much larger scale with the help of technology, lean operations and superior credit checks. We noted that Online P2P Lending is already taking place on a large scale in the Western parts of the world and it is at a very young stage in India and should be introduced and taken advantage of.

What is your life mantra?

Listen before you speak, ignore the haters, work hard, be kind and don’t forget to laugh and help people grow and you will grow with them and everything else will just fall into place.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

Educating Indian users about the concept, lack of regulation with regards to P2P Lending, Streamlining operations, lack of access to credit bureau data and talent acquisition.

How did you overcome those challenges?

Through implementing more technology, developing new products with banks and regulators and developing advanced algorithms,

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

Currently, the business is bootstrapped and completely funded through its promoters and the revenue generated.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

It is too early to deal with such problems

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Patience, perseverance and obsessively aggressive focus

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

I’m not at liberty to disclose this information. We have developed a highly sophisticated credit assessment engine and engaged a financial data aggregator and a social and email data aggregator whose analysis are fed into our algorithm along with 120 more data points based on inputs from the user which helps us create a more holistic credit profile of each borrower.

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

Make a to-do list every morning and make sure you clear it on the same day, it does wonder by helping one organize his thoughts

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

Exercise more, a healthy lifestyle is very important.

Answer in less than 50 words

  • One tip to success:

Do not be afraid to take risks, take chances, but don’t be foolish, you will learn more from real life than from all the books in the world and make sure you choose the right people to work with, help your team grow and your business will grow automatically and always stay calm.

  • One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Get stuck in a Job or business for the wrong reasons or because you were just too afraid of the unknown

  • One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

If you’re good at what you do and you can show it, money and success will follow, perception is a very powerful tool and must be used judiciously

What are your plans for next 3 years?

Make Lendbox a one-stop financial services solution for all kinds of financial products and loans ranging from Rs 10,000 to over Rs 10 crore and across personal and business loans. Make organized finance accessible to each and every corner of India through technology

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

Not much really, every step has taught me a lot.

What are your top three getaway destinations?

Spain (Madrid or South of Spain), Tanzania and any of the lesser known Indian hill stations

Share a quote that inspires you the most.

“If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

Inspiring Entrepreneurs

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All the best

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