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Nivasa Finance secures seed funding led by Prime Venture Partners
13 May 2026, 12:38 PMThe Bengaluru-based startup will use the fresh capital to scale its operations over the next 12 months and expand geographically, among others.
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Nivasa Finance has raised Rs 25 crore in a seed funding round led by Prime Venture Partners, with participation from Blume Ventures and Whiteboard Capital.
The round also saw participation from a clutch of angel investors, though their names were not disclosed.
The Bengaluru-based startup will use the fresh capital to scale its operations over the next 12 months, expand geographically, and deepen its distribution network and partnerships with banks, NBFCs, and housing finance companies. It also plans to grow its on-ground field execution network.
Nivasa Finance, which was founded in 2025 by Samit Shetty and Hitesh Saraf, is a secured housing credit platform focused on underserved borrowers in rural and semi-urban India. Shetty previously founded Chaitanya India Fin Credit, later acquired by Navi Technologies, while Saraf has nearly two decades of experience building AI-driven risk systems at fintech firms such as ZestMoney and Smartcoin.
The startup currently partners with over 10 lenders and has facilitated loans worth more than Rs 20 crore in Karnataka.
Shetty, co-founder, Nivasa Finance, noted that India doesn't have a credit problem, it has a mortgage debt problem.
"Our mortgage debt to GDP ratio is at 20% of the levels in developed economies and below 40% of most developing countries, while on unsecured we are mostly on par. There is a large segment of borrowers across India who are building homes and own property but remain excluded from formal secured credit systems, not because of lack of intent or repayment ability, but because the access and fulfilment mechanisms are non-transparent and very complex," he explained.
Sanjay Swamy, managing partner at Prime Venture Partners, said that 100% of households in more than 600,000 villages in India aspire to transform from semi-permanent to permanent homes and we see a lot of this happening in the next decade.
"Samit, Hitesh and team are committed to driving this transformation with fair and affordable financing," he added.
The raise comes amid sustained investor interest in affordable housing finance in India. Weaver Services, a technology-led housing finance platform targeting self-employed borrowers, raised $170 million in a round led by Lightspeed and Premji Invest last year.
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