For a large part of the population that does not have access to conventional financial institutions and instruments, peer-to-peer lending platforms turned out to be a boon.

And Gurgoan-based Faircent has been a pioneer of sought in this industry and it was the first company to have got NBFC-P2P certification from RBI. Now, the company is looking to expand its operations and is planning to emerging technologies like blockchain to grow its business.

The P2P company also informed that although it is headquartered out of Gurgoan, it sees major part of customer base – both lenders and borrowers – from the southern part of India.

“We have seen that about 40 per cent of user base is coming from South India. Out of which Bengaluru accounts for 30 per cent of the business and Hyderabad stands second with 10 per cent,” said Vinay Mathews, founder and COO, Faircent.

In terms of technology usage and expansion, Mathews informed that they are contemplating using blockchain for smart contraction and leverage its API platform for both borrowers and lenders – these open APIs will allow other fintech companies to leverage the company’s infrastructure to build new digital lending products.

Although Faircent is like any typical P2P platform, it has developed different models to mitigate risk for lenders and that it claims is its major USP. There are three ways through which, the company mitigates risk – one is through crowd funding, second is through distribution of money to lenders from different cities and areas, and third is through offering different kind of loan products and cross-checking if the money is being used for that particular need or not.