For many, buying their home is one of life’s biggest accomplishments. After all, a home is one of the basic needs of humanity. However, in reality, owning a home is difficult, especially for lower to middle-income families. It is even more challenging with the amount of paperwork and leg work involved. But what if someone swooshes in and does all the hard work for you while you go about your duties?
Introducing BASIC home loan, the one-stop-shop to own a home!
Understanding BASIC Home Loan:
Started by two ambitious professionals, Atul Monga and Kalyan Josyula in 2020, the aim was to be India’s largest online mortgage broker. The aim is to revolutionize affordable home loans for tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India by using a “phygital” approach. It means generating business through the website/agent network.
The brand ensures that each customer’s needs are looked after by trained experts without an additional charge. Right from documentation to disbursement is handled by the brand’s advisor, who receives a commission on every successful disbursement. As a result, customers receive better products through digital comparison, faster disbursements through agent-led fulfilment, and complete transparency of the loan process at their convenience.
“We are trying to offer consumers in India a much better experience by doing all the legwork so that they can focus on finding the right lender.” Atul Monga, Founder & CEO of BASIC Home Loan.
Technology has been widely adopted in all businesses. Still, the Founder of BASIC Home Loan, Atul Monga feels that the home loan processing business in the banking sector has been late in embracing technology. The home loan process remains time-consuming and a tedious job which proves to be frustrating for all customers. At BASIC, their vision is to empower consumers with technology and provide doorstep human support, this will simplify and quicken the process of home buying for the end customers. They aim to digitize and automate the home loan origination, documentation, customer verification, and disbursement process.
Why Choose A Basic Name Like ‘Basic’?
BASIC is the ideal word for the services the brand is hoping to provide. Food, housing, and clothing are the basic needs of humanity. The company is trying to make lending accessible, quick, and stress-free for people looking to own a home, one of life’s basic requirements.
Home Loan Simplified For Customers
The typical profile of the home loan audience might consist of:
- Income Bracket: Rs 3 lakhs to 14 lakhs, Median salary: Rs 7.5 lakhs
- Profession: Both Salaried and Self-employed
- Interest – Home Buying, Loan against property, Construction Loan, Renovation Loan, Balance Transfer. (Customers lookout for a new house that will suit their family situation and provide them with financial security)
- Age – 25-50, Median age: 35
- Cities – 21 cities in India
Here is how they can apply for loans:
- Customers can apply either through a website, or we get referrals through BASIC’S network of builders and influencers for home buying.
- After a lead creation, an agent is assigned to the customer who visits the customer’s house and using proprietary technology based on actual credit policies of the banks matches the customer to the right product/lender.
- The agent starts paperless processing by applying to the selected bank using BASIC’s technology.
- The sanction from the applied bank hits the platform within the next 1-2 days.
- The agent collects the hard copies of the documents from customers and submits them to the bank for the final disbursements.
- BASIC Home Loan does not charge its customers any fee at any stage of the process.
Why Choose Basic Over Others?
BASIC home loan aims to help secure home loans for customers at the easiest convenience. Here is what they bring to the table and why their service stands out.
- Basic is India’s first platform for automating home loans for middle & low-income households.
- Using their proprietary tech for the best lender selection, customers can get free instant and personalised quotes from top lenders in the market.
- BASICs’ live tracking tool showcases the customer’s home Loan journey and notifies them of their Loan application status from the login to the sanction stage.
- They enable lenders to fulfill their priority sector lending norms, as per RBI’s requirements.
- They provide doorstep support with a home loan processing delivery service using our technology from a dedicated relationship manager.
As per reports, India is ‘home’ to 17% of the world’s homeless population. However, India has a shortage of 18.8 million houses to support the current population base. Unavailability of credit is not the only reason why this shortage of houses. There is an imbalance in the distribution of credit, especially in economically weaker sections and low-income households. The overall distribution of credit in India remains outdated with various issues on both supply and demand sides.
As an organization, BASIC is working toward solving the housing problem in India and believes that providing low and middle-income households with easy access to financing is one way to do so.
From A Paper Idea To A Promising Startup
The company was started with a seed investment of US$500K by Picus Capital basis their paper idea. In FY22, they’ve raised US$3.5 million from Gruhas Proptech, 9 Unicorns, and Good Capital.
The founders believe that there is no direct major competitor to their business model. However, their indirect competitors can be:
• Banks and individual agents are traditional in approach and are not tech-focused. Tech is not a core competency of either banks or individual agents
• Web aggregators such as Paisabazaar and BankBazaar
The main challenge has been to convince banks and HFCs to utilize technology. This has proved to be the biggest pain point as they have been using legacy processes and systems and it is hard to break into them. The overall mortgage industry remains an offline industry primarily because India doesn’t have a centralized database of property ownership and other details.
Even though banks acknowledge the value of their tech offerings, they’re slow to technology adoption. Therefore, it takes a lot of time and effort to convince them to integrate BASICs products into the bank’s home loan processing system.
Another challenge is analyzing the property and making a decision which is difficult to digitise. There are various regulatory reasons why banks and HFCs have to make disbursements offline through paper documentation.
Also read: How This Startup Is Working Towards Creating A Debt-Free India – Freed!
BASIC’s Plan For The Future
“In the next 2 years, Basic home loan services will be available in more than 250+ cities with an Agent network of 15000+ making mortgages accessible to low and middle-income groups across the country including Tier 2&3 cities and rural areas.” Kalyan Josyula, Co-Founder & COO of BASIC Home Loan
Since its inception, here is what its growth looks like;
- Agent Network: BASIC’s agent network was 900 across India by the end of 2020-21 and grew to 4000 by FY22.
- Number of Cities: The number of cities was 6 in FY 20-21. It has increased to 20+ cities and expanding every day. Major cities are Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Indore, Bhopal, and Jaipur.
- Disbursement Amount: They’ve disbursed Rs 1,000 Cr Home Loans in FY22, which is a 5X growth from the previous FY.
BASIC is paid by the Banks directly; this means that they do not charge anything to their customers.
With an impact like this within a short span, BASIC is all set to make bigger waves going forward. They want to become the first Neo-Housing Finance company for people looking for affordable home loan needs in India. They will continue to work towards solving the housing problem in India and believe that one way to solve this is by providing easy financing access to low and middle-income households.
In the quest to achieve this vision, they desire to be the preferred platform for all stakeholders in the home loan industry; those seeking home loans, brokers for banks, partners for advisors, and the preferred employer for their employees. The stakeholders must share a common vision and work towards it to develop the entire housing and lending ecosystem.
In this new paradigm, the participants in the financing ecosystem must develop new products to accelerate the housing opportunity, which will result in significant and long-term economic benefits for the country.
Meet The Founding Team
Atul Monga, Founder & CEO of BASIC Home Loan
Atul Monga is the Co-founder and CEO of BASIC Home Loans; a start-up working on digitizing home loans and increasing affordable loan penetration for middle and low-income households. Atul found that the affordable housing market has vast potential, yet ecosystem players ignore it. Through BASIC, he wants to ensure hassle-free loans with its automated platform.
Before starting his venture, Atul worked in the Indian FinTech industry, where he set up and led businesses for various digital lenders. He is ex-PolicyBazaar and Credit Suisse. He has been an Intrapreneur at Three FinTechs and a Mechanical Engineer from IIT Delhi. He was also an investment banker and helped raise capital for Rubique Technologies – a FinTech marketplace, Dogspot- India’s biggest online platform for Dogs, Cats, and small pets, and Disha Solar- a solar power installation service provider.
Atul’s journey spans from being an Investment Banker and Angel Investor to becoming a Technopreneur and a FinTech specialist. He has held many leadership roles and helped companies in strategic alliances and partnerships, managed their operations, and executed several financial transactions for global companies, which included IPO, M&A, and other equity & debt products.
Kalyan Josyula, Co-Founder & COO of BASIC Home Loan
Kalyan Josyula is the Co-Founder & COO of BASIC Home Loan – a platform for automating home loans for middle & low-income households in India. Kalyan is an ex-investment banker and consumer internet business specialist, who has 15+ years of cross-functional (Corporate Finance, Strategy, and Operations) experience in building organizations across e-commerce marketplaces & ride-hailing start-ups in India, SEA & Middle East. Kalyan has played a variety of roles across industries and has worked with large companies such as OLA Cabs, Lazada Group, and Credit Suisse. He has a strong analytical mindset and finance domain expertise, including deep know-how of IT solutions and financial modeling skills. He enjoys planning & executing operational strategy, particularly turning KRAs into actionable targets with budgets and measurable KPIs.
