Startup Deep Dive : Basic Home Loan — how a free-to-borrower mortgage marketplace grew revenue nine-fold in two years

Basic Home Loan charges the home-buyer nothing, yet its revenue climbed from about ₹6 crore in FY22 to ₹54.3 crore in FY24 (Tracxn) — roughly a nine-fold jump in two years. The trick is who actually pays: the banks do, handing the platform a commission of up to 2.25% on every loan it helps them close.

That inversion — free for the borrower, paid for by the lender — is the whole business. It has carried a Gurugram company founded in the middle of the 2020 lockdown to more than $1.1 billion in cumulative disbursals, a network of roughly 90-plus banks and housing-finance firms, and a ₹87.5 crore Series B led by Bertelsmann India Investments. It has also left the company exposed to the one thing it does not control: the commission cheque at the other end.

Quick facts

What they do

Basic Home Loan is a home-loan distributor: it sits between the borrower and the bank, and it makes money only when a loan closes. The customer does not pay a fee.

• Who it serves: mostly first-time, mid- and low-income home-buyers in tier-2 and tier-3 India, where branch coverage is thin and paperwork is the main barrier (company-stated).
• What it does: collects income and property documents, runs eligibility against multiple lenders at once, and routes each file to the bank most likely to approve it at the best rate.
• The panel: roughly 90-plus banks and housing-finance companies, including SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC and Axis Bank (Inc42, September 2024).
• Reach: about 30 operating cities run through hubs in 10 cities, a field force cited at around 15,000 agents, and coverage claimed across 650 districts (Entrackr / Outlook Business, company-stated).
• Newer products: HOM-i, an AI assistant that pre-checks eligibility; Homfinity, an in-house lending arm; and a co-lending / First Loss Default Guarantee (FLDG) model where Basic shares part of the credit risk with partner lenders.

The origin

The company was started in 2020 by Atul Monga and Kalyan Josyula, two people who had spent years close to how credit actually gets sold in India. Monga had worked as an analyst at Credit Suisse and then run the affiliate business at Paisabazaar, the lending marketplace inside the PolicyBazaar group; Josyula came from Ola, Lazada and, earlier, Credit Suisse. Both had watched how much of a home loan is decided not by the borrower’s numbers but by which agent walks the file into which branch.

The founding insight was mundane and, for that reason, durable: in smaller cities the home loan is not really a product problem, it is a distribution and paperwork problem. A salaried applicant in a metro can compare rates online; a shopkeeper in a tier-3 town with informal income cannot, and often gets rejected not because the loan is unsafe but because the file was assembled badly or sent to the wrong lender. Basic’s bet was that if software could read a borrower’s profile and match it to the lender most likely to say yes, approval rates would rise and the commission would follow. The pandemic, which pushed families out of metros and into home-buying in smaller towns, made the timing work.

The struggle years

Basic was born into a hard market. It launched in 2020, in the middle of a lockdown, selling a big-ticket, trust-heavy product — a home loan — to people who had never bought one online and to banks that had spent decades relying on their own branches and offline agents.

Two constraints defined the early years. First, the model was structurally low-margin: as a distributor, Basic earned a slice of someone else’s loan, which meant it had to move enormous volume before the revenue looked like anything. Second, it was building trust on both sides at once — convincing wary first-time borrowers to hand over documents to an app, and convincing banks that a young intermediary could source clean, low-default files. Regulatory complexity in mortgage lending, and the sheer offline habit of the sector, slowed both.

The response was to go where the incumbents were weakest rather than fight them head-on. Instead of chasing metro salaried borrowers, Basic pushed into tier-2 and tier-3 cities and built a hybrid model — an app backed by a large on-ground agent network — because a purely digital pitch did not close loans in those markets. Revenue stayed small in absolute terms for a while (about ₹6 crore in FY22, company-stated via Inc42) even as volumes built underneath.

The turning point

The clearest inflection was the decision to stop being only a matchmaker and start standing behind the risk. In June 2023 Basic raised roughly $4.7 million in a round led by veteran investor Ashish Kacholia, explicitly to set up a lending arm — the beginning of Homfinity and the co-lending / FLDG model (Inc42, June 2023).

The numbers on each side of that shift tell the story. Before it leaned into lending and its own products, revenue was about ₹6 crore in FY22 and roughly ₹30 crore in FY23 (company-stated). After — with the lending arm, the HOM-i assistant and deeper real-estate tie-ups — reported revenue reached ₹54.3 crore in FY24, a 65.2% year-on-year rise (Tracxn), and management put FY25 at around ₹70 crore and set an FY26 target of ₹150–200 crore (Outlook Business). The pivot from pure distribution to a distribution-plus-risk model is what turned a thin-margin broker into a company that could talk about an IPO by 2030.

The money behind it

Basic has raised a modest amount by fintech standards and stretched it. Reported totals differ by tracker, so both are given.

• Seed, 2020: about $0.5 million (Inc42).
• Series A, 2021: about $3.5 million (Inc42).
• Pre-Series B, June 2023: about $4.7 million, led by Ashish Kacholia, to fund the lending arm (Inc42).
• Series B, September 2024: ₹87.5 crore ($10.6 million), led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) and CE-Ventures, with Gruhas, LetsVenture, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts and Ashish Kacholia participating; Dexter Capital advised (Entrackr / Inc42, September 2024).
• Total raised to date: reported at roughly $19.3 million (Inc42) to $24.6 million (Tracxn / Crunchbase) — about ₹185–235 crore. The gap comes from how debt and smaller tranches are counted; both figures are cited here rather than picking one.

What each backer changed:

• Ashish Kacholia (Pre-Series B, 2023): bankrolled the move into lending, the single most important product change in the company’s history.
• Bertelsmann India Investments (Series B lead, 2024): a growth-stage investor known for backing scaled Indian internet companies, signalling the model was ready to expand geographically.
• CE-Ventures and Gruhas: strategic capital tying Basic to the real-estate and Gulf investment ecosystems, supporting the push deeper into property-linked distribution.

Reported valuation sits at roughly $44.8 million (about ₹430 crore) per PitchBook and Tracxn; the company has not confirmed a figure, so treat it as an estimate.

How it makes money

The model is a distribution take-rate business — Basic is paid by lenders, not borrowers — with a newer, higher-risk lending layer bolted on.

• Money in: a commission from the partner bank or HFC on each disbursed loan, cited at up to 2.25% of the loan amount (StartupTalky, company-stated). The borrower pays nothing for the matchmaking.
• The lending layer: through Homfinity and co-lending / FLDG arrangements, Basic can take a share of the loan and of the credit risk, which raises the revenue per loan but also puts its own capital on the line if borrowers default.
• Costs out: the agent network and field operations, technology (including HOM-i), and customer acquisition in cities where trust must be earned in person.
• Where the margin sits: the company reports a first-level contribution margin (CM1) of about 35% and says it has been CM1-positive since March 2021 (StartupTalky, company-stated) — but note this is a unit-level margin, not audited net profit, which the company has not disclosed.
• The part people get wrong: because the borrower pays nothing, it looks like a free service. It is not free — the bank funds it out of the interest it will earn, and Basic’s whole economics depend on the lender’s willingness to keep paying that commission.

The numbers

Operating revenue has grown fast off a small base. Net profit or loss is not in the public record; the figures below are revenue, mixing filing-based data (FY24) with company-stated numbers for other years, each labelled.

• FY26 target: ₹150–200 crore, a stated 2–3x increase (Outlook Business, company-stated).
• Cumulative loans disbursed: more than $1.1 billion through the lender network (Inc42, September 2024).
• Loan applications sourced cumulatively: more than $12 billion (Inc42, September 2024).
• Loan applications processed per month: about ₹8,500 crore, with roughly ₹30,000 crore sanctioned via the HOM-i assistant (Outlook Business, 2025, company-stated).
• Headcount: reported at 438 as of August 2025 (Tracxn), up about 72% year on year.

Where the money comes from

The revenue mix leans on geography and channel more than on any single lender.

• Geography: the core is tier-2 and tier-3 cities and their districts — about 30 cities run through 10 hubs, with coverage claimed across 650 districts (Entrackr / Outlook Business, company-stated). This is the opposite of most fintech lenders, who cluster in metros.
• Channel: a hybrid of app plus a large agent network cited at around 15,000 agents (Inc42, September 2024). The surprise is how offline the “digital” business really is — in small-town India the field agent, not the app, closes the loan.
• Product mix: still dominated by pure distribution commissions, but shifting toward the higher-value lending and co-lending layer that the 2023 and 2024 rounds funded.
• Lender concentration: spread across roughly 90-plus banks and HFCs, which limits dependence on any one bank but ties the whole business to bank commission policies (Inc42, September 2024).

The risks

• Commission dependence: Basic earns a slice of someone else’s loan. If banks cut distributor commissions — as they periodically do when they want to control costs or push their own channels — margins compress with no easy offset, because the borrower cannot be charged instead.
• Credit risk from the lending pivot: the move into Homfinity and FLDG co-lending raises revenue per loan but puts Basic’s own capital behind borrower defaults. In tier-2/3 lending to lower-income, often informal-income households, a rise in defaults would hit the newest, most profitable part of the business hardest.
• Rate and housing cycle: home-loan volume tracks interest rates and property demand. A rate spike or a slowdown in tier-2/3 home-buying would cut disbursals — and therefore commissions — directly, since the company has little recurring revenue to cushion a down cycle.
• Undisclosed bottom line: the company has not published audited net profit or loss, so its cash burn against the FY26 ₹150–200 crore target is not verifiable from outside. Fast revenue growth off a small base is not the same as profitability.

The takeaway

Basic Home Loan’s lesson is about where you choose to be free. By refusing to charge the borrower and billing the bank instead, it removed the single biggest point of friction in small-town home lending — the fee — and let volume do the rest. But the same choice created its central vulnerability: a business whose revenue is entirely someone else’s commission has to keep earning that commission, which is why the company spent its 2023 and 2024 funding buying its way into the loan itself. The transferable idea is that being free to the customer is not a giveaway; it is a decision about which side of the transaction you extract value from — and a company that picks the payer it does not control has to eventually become the payer, or stay at its mercy.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Basic Home Loan and when?

It was founded in 2020 in Gurugram by Atul Monga (co-founder and CEO), a former Credit Suisse analyst and Paisabazaar affiliate-business head, and Kalyan Josyula (co-founder and COO), formerly with Ola, Lazada and Credit Suisse. The registered entity is Basic Enterprises Private Limited.

How does Basic Home Loan make money if it is free for borrowers?

It earns a commission from the partner bank or housing-finance company on each loan it helps disburse — cited at up to 2.25% of the loan amount (company-stated). Through Homfinity and co-lending arrangements it can also take a share of the loan and its credit risk. The borrower pays nothing for the matching service.

How much has Basic Home Loan raised, and from whom?

Its Series B in September 2024 was ₹87.5 crore ($10.6 million), led by Bertelsmann India Investments and CE-Ventures. Total funding is reported between about $19.3 million (Inc42) and $24.6 million (Tracxn/Crunchbase), with backers including Ashish Kacholia, Gruhas, Venture Catalysts, LetsVenture and 9Unicorns.

What is Basic Home Loan’s revenue?

Reported operating revenue was ₹54.3 crore in FY24, up 65.2% year on year (Tracxn). Management has stated roughly ₹70 crore for FY25 and an FY26 target of ₹150–200 crore. Net profit or loss has not been publicly disclosed.

Is Basic Home Loan profitable or planning an IPO?

The company says it has been contribution-margin positive since March 2021, but has not disclosed audited net profit or loss. Management has said it is targeting an IPO by 2030 (company-stated).

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Inc42 — BASIC Home Loan bags $10.6 million Series B from BII and others (September 2024)
• Entrackr — Basic Home Loan raises $10.6 Mn in Series B round (September 2024)
• Indian Startup News — Fintech startup BASIC Home Loan raises Rs 87.5 crore in a Series B round (October 2024)
• Outlook Business — Basic Home Loan eyes 2-3x revenue growth to ₹200 Cr in FY26; plans IPO by 2030 (2025)
• Tracxn — BASIC Home Loan company profile, financials and shareholding (2026)
• PitchBook — BASIC Home Loan company profile: valuation, funding and investors (2026)
• Crunchbase — Basic Enterprise Private Limited company profile (2026)
• StartupTalky — Basic Home Loan success story (business model, commission and margin, 2024)
• Inc42 — BASIC Home Loan bags funding from Ashish Kacholia to set up lending arm (June 2023)

Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.