Bridging the India-Bharat Divide: Jai Kisan's Journey to Empower a Billion Indians

“Rashida, my house-help in Mumbai, lives in Dharavi, just one kilometer from the largest HDFC Bank branch. But it took Bajaj Finance and various other players like it to cater to her. Today, she can get many financial services without any credit history, including a cell phone loan.

Why can’t we extend the same facility to a billion people in semi-urban or rural India, is the question that stared us in the face.”

- Arjun Ahluwalia, Co-Founder and CEO, Jai Kisan

India is a country of multitudes.

In metros like Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, securing a loan for a cell phone without a credit history is becoming almost as simple as swiping on an app, thanks to fintechs and modern banks. However, farmers across rural India often struggle to access credit for essential raw materials like pesticides and seeds. 

This stark contrast between financial landscapes across India and Bharat caught the attention of Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego. It led them to start Jai Kisan, a Blume Fund III company, in 2019, which is changing how rural India builds, buys, and transacts.

Since facilitating its first loan in December 2019, Jai Kisan’s annual disbursements have surged from ₹24 crores in FY20 to ~₹3000 crores in FY24. Cumulatively, Jai Kisan has disbursed approximately ₹6,000 crores to date while working with over 350 corporates, 100,000 merchants, and 800,000 farmers.

They’ve raised over $90 million across equity and debt, from institutional investors like Blume Ventures, Arkam Ventures, British International Investments, Mirae Asset Ventures, GMO Venture Partners and DG Daiwa Ventures, and lenders such as SIDBI, HSBC, Alteria Capital, Trifecta Capital, Northern Arc, Credable and Clime Finance to name a few. 

But it’s impossible to talk about Jai Kisan’s journey without talking about what prompted two urban boys working in the US to let go of their cushy jobs and return to not just their roots but go beyond and build for the rural customers.

Let’s go.

Someone’s Going To Build For Bharat

It’s 2015.

Adriel and Arjun are freshmen at Texas A&M University.

Adriel is ethnically from the Philippines, while Arjun was born and raised in Mumbai.

Arjun: ​“Over four years in college, we bonded and ideated over a lot of initiatives for emerging markets. It was about solving fundamental challenges for the masses, resulting in disproportionate economic outcomes.”

After college, they had brief and fruitful stints in private equity across different geographies and companies.

It’s 2017.

India has made significant strides in improving its digital public infrastructure. 

But there was still an unfulfilled gap.

Arjun: ​“In 2017, we took a one and a half month sabbatical and traveled to India, spending time with policymakers, startups, banks, and industry folks. We wanted to understand the core need and what people were building. What we saw was surprising: Everybody was building for folks like you and me, or the folks working for us.”

While financial services had been revolutionized for India 1 and its adjacent blue-collar workforce, there was a glaring gap in serving customers in Bharat.

Arjun: ​“Someone’s going to build for them. Can it be us? We jumped in with the big audacious goal of providing financial services to rural individuals and businesses.”

“Starting with credit for their working capital needs, then moving to other credit and insurance products for these individuals.”

How many individuals are we talking about?

About 1 billion, who are central to the nation’s agricultural value chain.

Soil, Sweat, and Breakthroughs

A key part of knowing the Jai Kisan story is understanding how focused they are on down-to-the-ground execution by being close to the customer.

So much so that Arjun and Adriel moved to a village during their sabbatical to understand their customer, their problems, and how to solve them. This was the most important move that seeded the idea of Jai Kisan. (And even being close to the customer is a part of Jai Kisan’s DNA. More on it later.)

Arjun: ​“This village was eight hours from Mumbai, four hours from Nasik. Someone we knew had a sugar mill there. So we took a store outside that mill, half the size of this room, and filled it with pesticides and seeds. We sold these goods to farmers for six to eight months.”

They noticed that nearly 70% of farmers visiting their store expected to buy these supplies on credit.

This was a key realization: merchant credit is not a service but an expectation in India.

Arjun: ​“After that, we divided responsibilities. Being local, I took up the responsibility of catering to the demand side, which means our customers and partners on the supply side, like banks.

“Adriel took on responsibilities related to tech, ops, finance, and team coordination.”

Tinkering in a team led to the Bharat Khata app, designed to digitize transactions and manage credit for over 150,000 merchants in India.

Bharat Khata enables merchants to seamlessly integrate with their suppliers and customers, offering crucial operational data.

Arjun: ​“We’ve developed two main tech solutions for our business. One is Bharat Khata (available in 11 languages), which helps us understand merchants’ activities digitally and allows less tech-savvy farmers to get financing through a point-of-sale system. 

“We recently created a farmer app for tech-savvy farmers. With this app, farmers can complete a quick KYC and underwriting process at home, get pre-approved for financing, and scan a QR code at the merchant’s store to purchase goods.”

“We also have a lender portal for banks and NBFCs financing our merchants and farmers. It’s a web-based platform where lenders can review, approve, or reject cases, and access documentation. We often integrate this portal directly with lenders’ systems for seamless operation.”

Cracking the Bharat Trust Code

While developing their products, the Jai Kisan team faced their first major challenge.

Arjun: ​“Reaching out directly to farmers in rural India was prohibitively expensive. It wasn’t just about convincing them; the cost was too high for us to manage. We saw other companies achieving some product adoption in tier II cities, but at an extremely high customer acquisition cost (CAC). Neither Adriel nor I had experience with high CAC models or scaling them sustainably. So, we aimed to develop a more cost-effective strategy to connect with these communities sustainably.”

The low-trust nature of Indian semi-urban and rural markets compounded the challenge. Even Flipkart and Amazon had to introduce Cash-on-Delivery to succeed in India because customers didn’t want to prepay for an order they didn’t know would come.

Instead of bypassing the established intermediaries and asking farmers to trust Jai Kisan, an unfamiliar app from Mumbai/​Bangalore, over their local contacts, they took a different approach.

Arjun: ​“We knew that simply asking people to shift their trust without context wouldn’t work. Instead, we chose to empower the middlemen with established relationships with the farmers to facilitate our services rather than disrupting their roles.”

Jai Kisan embraced a B2B2C model, partnering with local merchants who had established relationships with farmers.

Arjun said this was a key value unlocked in the Jai Kisan journey.

If this hadn’t been solved, there was a chance that none of their products would have worked in a low-trust market.

And how does the company generate revenue?

Let’s explain it in a simple manner. 

Jai Kisan facilitates two main financial products:

1. Supply Chain Financing:
   • Finances merchants to buy inventory from corporates or sell produce to them.
   • Examples: Financing a fertilizer dealer to buy stock.
   • Revenue: Spread from facilitating loans for lender partners.
   • Future plan: Direct lending through their own NBFC, earning interest income.
2. Farmer Financing:
   • Provides small loans (5,000 to 50,000 rupees) to farmers for agricultural inputs like seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and equipment.
   • Revenue: a) Margin between lender’s and farmer’s rates, plus fees b) Interest from direct lending (planned)

Both facilitate smoother transactions in the agricultural supply chain, from farmers to merchants to corporates.

The future version of Jai Kisan will have more revenue streams as it envisions being the core financial app for loans, insurance, and other financial services for its customers. In August 2024, Jai Kisan moved closer to this vision. They obtained a Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) license after acquiring a majority stake in Kushal Finnovation Capital, an RBI-registered NBFC. 

Arjun: ​“We want to be an aggregator and facilitator of financial services. Starting with credit and expanding into other financial services like insurance and savings. In about one and a half to two years, we realized the regulatory landscape encourages that if you are facilitating lending or credit products, you should become a regulated entity and have the highest standards for corporate governance.”

Jai Kisan’s Secret Weapon — Build for Bharat DNA

Jai Kisan employs nearly 200 people in their Mumbai and Bengaluru offices.

Arjun: ​“When we started building in this space, building for Bharat wasn’t cool. It wasn’t even a term. That in some way created a passion for frugal innovation and execution.”

“We instill a strong cost-consciousness in everyone — from the founders to the newest team members. Our goal is not to spend lavishly to solve problems but to build a sustainable, value-driven company.”

Despite raising $90 million and disbursing ₹3,000 crores annually, we maintain a low burn rate, resulting in a substantial corpus in our accounts. This is not just the result of a few individuals; it’s our culture where every dollar counts and creates value.”

While frugality is at the core, they have another tenet to their culture: working on-ground during the first few months. Mandatorily.

Arjun: ​“This goes back to our philosophy, when Adriel and I were trying to move to the village to get first-hand knowledge.”

“It helps our team members understand the customer’s problems and build for them in a manner that appreciates the challenges and the ecosystem they live in and brings a sense of empathy when designing and developing our products.”

Another core tenet of Jai Kisan is corporate governance. Arjun: ​“We have a very strong advisory board overseeing Jai Kisan’s management. They come from accomplished backgrounds as former bank CEOs, former credit heads, and compliance heads of banks in India. They spend eight to ten hours with the management team every month on different parts of our business.”

From Small Loans to Rural Revolution

Since facilitating its first loan in December 2019, Jai Kisan has experienced staggering growth, even with the pandemic smack in the middle of the journey. 

The company’s assets under management (AUM) surged from ₹16 crores in March 2020 to ~₹725 crores by March 2024.

In the last fiscal year alone, Jai Kisan facilitated ~₹3,000 crores in credit, benefiting ~15,000 merchants and ~120,000 farmers. The company reached ~800,000 rural individuals through its extensive network.

Here’s what Ashish Fafadia, partner at Blume Ventures, said:

Ashish: ​“Jai Kisan has firmly established itself as a crucial player in the rural ecosystem by building strong relationships with large corporates and farmers. Their resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic was remarkable, maintaining industry-leading repayment rates even amidst a global crisis, signaling the strength of their business model. This success is a testament to the team, who tackles challenges head-on with transparency and determination.”

When asked about Jai Kisan’s right to win, Arjun was sharp and astute.

Arjun: ​“Our right to win in this segment lies in three key areas.”

“As a fintech, securing substantial capital at competitive rates is vital, and our focus on priority sector lending makes us an attractive partner for banks aiming to meet regulatory targets.”

“Secondly, despite a challenging regulatory environment, we’ve secured significant regulatory approvals and established a strong moat. This regulatory advantage differentiates us in a crowded market.”

Thirdly, we understand our target market better than anyone else. We’ve dedicated significant time understanding this market and built partnerships across 12 states to reach our audience efficiently. Our penetration into value chains has been substantial, enabling deep market integration.”

Looking forward, Jai Kisan has ambitious targets. They aim to expand AUM to ₹5,000 crores over the next 1 to 3 years.

Arjun: ​“Currently, our top 20 corporate partners collectively generate a turnover of ₹72,000 crores. Of this, ₹20,000 crores is extended as credit from these corporates to their merchants, who, in turn, provide credit to farmers. This demonstrates the extensive business potential we have within our active anchor base and highlights our capacity for significant growth”

The fact that the team has risen above a never-solved-for Go-To-Market, and an evolving regulatory landscape means that all those days spent in the Nashik village in 2017 have paid off.

Jai Kisan’s journey isn’t just about building a great business. It’s about building a better Bharat.

And in this Bharat, for every Rashida in Mumbai who can get a loan for her phone in just a swipe, there’s a farmer in Guntur who gets a loan to buy seeds and pesticides and improve the quality of their life, bridging the gap that once seemed like a distant dream.

Jai Kisan isn’t just changing how rural India transacts; it’s sowing the seeds of a rural revolution in our heartland, one village at a time.