Project overview
Before COVID-19, Lendingkart’s underwriting leaned heavily on offline assessments—field agents collected shop documents, verified operations, and endorsed borrower credibility. However, lockdowns halted in-person contact, freezing disbursal pipelines.
Lendingkart became the first NBFC in India to integrate with the account aggregator ecosystem, enabling instant, consent-driven access to verified bank statements from multiple financial institutions. Combined with ML-based underwriting and real-time digital disbursal, the company’s redesigned flow marked a crucial leap toward India’s MSME credit digitisation, growing it's operation across 2000+ cities and towns in India. The digital journey reduced the loan disbursal TAT by 80% and thereby increasing number of loans processed by 160% and revenue by 125%
Product: Zero touch journey
My role: Lead UX designer
Timeline: Feb 2019 - Jul 2021
Team: 16 members (2 Designers, 16 Engineers, 4 Product Manager, 5 Data Analyst)
The challege
With COVID-19 restrictions halting travel and physical verification, disbursals dropped sharply. The challenge was to design a easy and friction-free user journey, digitizing the entire origination-to-disbursal journey while maintaining compliance, fraud detection, and customer trust among MSMEs with low digital literacy
Key objectives:
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Digitisation collateral-free MSME lending to streamline document collection and disbursal process
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Extend operations to more towns and cities to drive user growth
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Establishing as a digital co-lending platform to integrate with existing banks
User persona
To design and understand Lendingkart's digital target audience better, we conducted a collaborate effort with mixpanel and pensaar design agency combing primary and secondary parameters to define product focus group, current application journey, their needs and pain points. ​
P. Ramesh, 34
Footwear shop owner
Sidhi Goyal, 39
Boutique owner
Rakkesh Agarwal, 44
Auto parts dealer
Highlights:
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Small business owners, typically aged between 28-45 years
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81% borrowers, geographical from tier 2 - tier 4 towns
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Moderate familiarity to digital technology solutions
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40% had no previous credit history.
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70% used native language on their smartphones
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80% valued low paperwork, collateral-free and quick approvals
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Empathetic assistance and customer service
User pain points:
High​
interest rates offered
Complex
application process
Prefers
Vernacular content
Limited
internet access
Basic
financial literacy
Variable
digital confidence
Cash-first
mindest
₹5-₹10 lakh
loan requirement
Opportunities:
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Simplified end to end lending process
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Automated legal business documents collection and verification
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Better credit underwriting leads to lower interest rates
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Reducing application to loan disbursal turn around time
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Drive NPS, trust and overall customer satisfaction rate
Kyra Raman
21 years (Student)
Aarav Kapoor
25 years (Salaried)
Pia Ghosh
28 years (Freelancers)
User journey breakdown
The previous lending process involved DSA agents visiting small business owners, collecting documents, and assessing eligibility manually. This process was time-consuming and heavily dependent on the agent. The tablet web interface for the agents was overloaded with questions and required extensive documentation. Our focus group, especially from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, would struggled with this UI complexity, and post-COVID, direct assistance was no longer feasible.
Highlights:
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Fragmented and manual steps delay processing
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High dependence on documentation
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Physical documentation is prone to errors and privacy risk
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Lack of digital tracking and communication issues
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Missed opportunities due to incomplete/pending applications
Design decisions
To streamline the user journey, we implemented a dynamic, self-serve flow that adapts to user inputs, eliminating the need for generic forms. By integrating an EMI calculator upfront, we addressed the cash-first mindset of users, allowing them to see their potential loan amount instantly. We also minimized data entry by fetching bank statements through phone number verification, cutting the application time from weeks to just three days. This not only enhanced user experience but also improved conversion rates while maintaining security and compliance.
Highlights:​
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Easier EMI first loan decision for the users.
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Progressive, grouped and dynamic form and document requirement
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Account aggregator integration, OCR and geo-location via photo and selfie verification for faster verification
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Real time application tracking, nudges and communication.
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Provisional loan in just 5 mins
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48 hrs loan offer term validity.
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Auto/manual nudges to move incomplete/pending applications to closure.
End to end loan disbursal journey:
1. Loan Estimation - Introduced a loan calculator for the user to input desired loan amount and estimated EMI.
2. Basic details - Collected basic personal details, followed by business details, and bank details in a streamlined manner.
3. Pre-terms verification - Instant verification of personal/business/bank details within 2-3 minutes and provisional loan amount is provided to the applicant in 5 mins.
4. Post-terms documentation: Based on the terms accepted by the user, we collected only declared documents
5. Loan disbursement: Once documents are verified, funds are disbursed within 1-2 business days, and the user can track the loan through a dashboard.
1. Start application nudge from EMI calculator
2. Basic details to check eligibility for loan
3. Users shares their personal, business and bank details (auto/manual)
OTP validation if eligible and a new user
Provisional loan offer shared
Bank statement upload (manual and AA)
Outcome:
Building the MSME lending experience around real user insights delivered measurable impact across scale, speed, and satisfaction. By simplifying onboarding, automating key verification steps, and shifting to instant decisioning, we enabled MSME users to access credit faster while the business expanded its reach exponentially.
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Loan book growth: Expanded by 42% within nine months, driven by higher approval throughput and increased borrower trust.
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City expansion: Presence grew from 150+ to 2000+ cities, with deeper penetration in tier 2/3/4 India through digital-first and assisted models.
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Conversion rate improvement: End-to-end application conversion improved by 57%, while drop-off rates reduced by 46% due to simplified, mobile-optimized flows.
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Turnaround time: Reduced from the industry average of 27 days to under 3 days, through automation of credit checks and document verification.
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Revenue uplift: Overall lending revenue grew by 125%, enabled by faster disbursement cycles and repeat borrower engagement.
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Recognition from regulators: Sahamati showcased Lendingkart's AA flow as a seamless and consentful way to share bank statements with banks and NBFCs
User testing & iterations
From late 2020 to early 2021, slice went through a few product evolution, we repeated our process of conducting user calling with our core users to understand their frustration and NPCI's compliance team before we shipped out any product or features.
First iteration, cause by​ clicks on stepper progress bar
First iteration - Expanded & collapsed
Final - Expanded & collapsed
Brand new website, to build trust and focused to get the application started
Conclusions
Manual
Automate
Elimination
Journey before digitisation
Journey after digitisation
Based on primary and secondary insight
Our design approach focused on breaking the traditional “submit first, find out later” flow - the main friction, into a transparent, instant-offer model that respected the urgency of MSME credit needs. Leveraging data-driven decisioning and assisted onboarding, we enabled users to get personalised loan offers within minutes, building trust before deeper documentation was required.
This shift from form-heavy onboarding to experience-led instant fulfilment not only reduced user effort but also redefined what simple, contextual, and human fintech design could achieve for small business owners in India.