Japan PE player to put $100 million on fintech companies

Mumbai: Prompted by easier overseas borrowing and foreign investment norms and tapering valuations of domestic NBFCs due to the liquidity crisis, Japanese special purpose private equity firm HarbourFront Capital is looking to invest up to $100 million in Indian fintech companies in FY20.

“The long-term goal is investing in Indian companies with a strong credit service model. Companies with asset-based businesses such as NBFCs and HFCs, which are new-age and technologically savvy, are mostly being considered for potential investment,” said a person close to the developments.

Harbour Front is a group company of Japanese serial investor Shinji Kimura's venture capital firm Das Capital, which has an equity exposure of more than $40 million in eight homegrown start-ups. These include Faircent, Drivezy, Slicepay and Farm to Fresh. Separately, Kimura’s payments company Any-Pay has a similar exposure in Indian payment gateway start-up Instamojo. HarbourFront Capital had last week completed the acquisition of significant minority stakes of mortgage finance technology firm Easy Home Finance for an undisclosed fee. The company is currently in discussions with other Indian fintechs to make more such investments as they find additional business prospects in the Indian credit market.


“We find value in the space as we understand the recent liquidity issue of NBFCs,” Sho Nakagawa, director Harbourfront Capital, told ET. “Our group's value proposition is obviously the capability to (be the) bridge between Japan and India start-up markets.

Considering RBI's move of easing ECB/FDI, we thought it would be the best time to make the most of our capability.”