DMI Finance expands digital lending portfolio with ZestMoney acquisition

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DMI Group (DMI), a pan-India financial services platform, has announced the acquisition of Buy Now Pay Later Startup ZestMoney (Zest). The transaction value of the fire sale deal was, however, not disclosed.

This acquisition announcement comes a month after ZestMoney announced that it would shut down all its operations on December 8. Zest also then announced the layoff of 150 employees from the startup last month amid failing profits and slow growth.

Those in the race for scooping up Zest included Aditya Birla Finance, Piramal and Hero Fincorp. However, Aditya Birla Finance and Piramal had recently backed out of the deal.

DMI Finance, the NBFC arm of DMI, will be a preferred lender on the Zest platform. Through this acquisition, DMI will have the exclusive right to use all Zest brands.

This acquisition will enable DMI to widen its engagement with current and potential customers by adding the ZestMoney checkout financing platform to its product suite.

Shivashish Chatterjee, Co-founder and Joint Managing Director of DMI, said: “ZestMoney has been a pioneering provider of checkout finance in India. We have been partnered with ZestMoney for 8+ years in various capacities. We firmly believe that this acquisition will be an important step in our journey to provide digital financial inclusion at scale across India.”

Mandar Satpute, Chief Operating Officer of Zest, said: “DMI has been at the forefront of digital lending in India. They bring strong capital support and deep expertise. DMI has been an early supporter of ZestMoney and we are very excited to take our partnership to a whole new level.”

Founded in 2015, Zest is a fully automated digital customer onboarding and servicing system, enabling customers to apply for and receive digital credit instantly at the point of sale.

It has over 80,000 merchants across India, including Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, MakeMyTrip, Nykaa, Samsung, Apple, Vivo, Croma, and Reliance Digital.

Founded in 2008 and supported by a deeply experienced team across 40+ offices in India, DMI Finance is a pure-play digital lender with products including consumption, personal and MSME loans.

It leverages technology to optimize every step in the lending stack, from sales and underwriting to customer service and collections.

DMI will also bring its customer base, balance-sheet strength and significant risk-management experience to drive growth across Zest’s online and offline merchant network.