Investments that suit my personal values -Story of Garima sharma

A self-made woman, Garima sharma is the co-founder and chairman of one of the leading NGOs in the child education sector today. Claiming to have sufficient knowledge of the financial world, she has always been an avid and prudent investor and, today she has a diversified portfolio worth Rs 50 lakhs in various asset classes consisting of Mutual Funds, commodities, ELSS and various other investments.

Garima, following on the footsteps of her father, a banker, started investing at the age of 20 (yes, that early!) and today 10 years later, she has a portfolio that any of us would be envious of. A few months, she discovered Peer to Peer lending through a friend in the USA who had doubled her investment in 2 years through P2P portals there. After doing a lot of research, she came across Lendbox, one of the leaders and pioneers in the P2P industry in India.
In a span of 3 months, she’s invested 13 Lac with Lendbox has helped as many as 30 people out, with their medical bills.

Here we bring to you a candid one to one with the lady herself, the lady who single handedly has changed the life of so many people.

Q: So, what pushed you to ditch the traditional investment routes and go for a P2P lending investment?

A: “Traditional investment is something I’ve been doing for the past 6-7 years now, and while it’s great seeing your money grow, there’s a certain sense of detachment and purposelessness that you feel when you’re just sitting and crunching numbers with your banker every month. I got to know about P2P investments through a friend a while back, and initially I was really skeptical. But I’m a convert now; I’ve been recommending it left, right and center to anyone who has even a bit of money to invest.”

Q: Why the change of heart?

A: “Despite having a big portfolio, I was unsatisfied with my investments and savings. My money was growing, but sitting in a bank, neither was it helping me, nor anyone else. It was just helping the banks grow! While going through Lendbox, I came across this young man, who needed a small loan to pay for his child’s open-heart surgery. I was not a believer at first, having read about a gazillion such scams over the Internet, but after having a lot of conversations with him, I decided to take the plunge.
That was my first loan, a small amount of Rs 50,000, which helped a child get her life back. Trust me, nothing has ever felt better.”

Q: So, it’s the social gratification does this for you?

A: “Don’t get me wrong, I have my selfish reasons also of course, the returns are great! I’ve been investing through the traditional routes for 9-10 years and my average return has been 12-14% annually, but with Lendbox, I’ve already seen returns of up to 18%, which is brilliant!”

Q: How has your journey been since then?

A: ‘Well after my first loan to that young father, I was sitting on the edge of my chair for a month, kind of expecting a default, but within 30 days, I got the first EMI from him, which finally gave me the boost that I required.
Since then, there’s been no looking back, I’ve invested 13 lakhs in the past 3-4 months with Lendbox till now and am getting regular interest payments, projecting an annual return of almost 20%.’

Q: What’s your motivation to invest in P2P?

A: ‘I don’t invest in just about anybody, being actively involved in the social sector, I’m a big believer in helping the needy, and I carefully select the people I want to loan money to.
Medical emergencies are something that are close to my heart, having lost my father to an incompetent surgeon, I firmly believe that every individual in this country deserves the best care possible and money should not be a constraint.
Today, I can proudly say that I’ve helped 20 people in the past few months in paying for their surgeries/medical bills.’

Q: Any advice for the people reading this?

A: ‘There are certain risks involved with P2P lending, and I would advice you to go through the borrower lists with great scrutiny, and choose wisely!’

You don’t need to have huge amounts of money to help people out; you don’t have to go out giving donations to unknown people. With the right intent, even a small amount can change someone’s life. Help people and earn money at the same time with Peer-to-peer lending.

Sign up as an investor/borrower at http://www.lendbox.com and start changing lives now!

Helping people through Lendbox: Investments with a social impact

Why Lendbox?

Balvinder credits his modest upbringing to help him grow up to be a man with a passion for giving back to society. A successful stock market broker by day, Balvinder works with the homeless around his locality in the evenings and provides free tuitions to the underprivileged children early mornings before work. Healso runsa small business operating an e-commerce site which promotes cottage industries products from the rural areas of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

“A friend introduced me to Lendbox and the idea of P2P Lending” says Balvinder

They were discussing new ways of investing where they can also make a social impact, “Impact Investing” so to speak and P2P Lending and then Lendbox came into picture. Balvinder also saw the financial advantage of P2P Lending and the great returns which the platform offers.

Personalizing The Personal Loan

Balvinder especially likes the fact that the system is completely transparent and the loans are made to real people. “I like that I know exactly where my money is going and who it’s going to and what it’s being used for, it personalizes and humanizes the whole experience for both sides of the table” he says.

Compare to Bank Rates

Lastly and quite naturally Balvinder likes the returns he gets on his investments through Lendbox. “It’s empowering to know that you can help people out and make money like banks do at the same time,” Balvinder says. “Of course there’s a bit of risk, but I make triple of what I would be making had I put my money in SIPs and infinitely more than what a fixed deposit would give me”

At the end, Balvinder found an investment platform which helps people out and also provides its investors a safe and high yield investment option, as per him it’s a completely win-win situation.

Story of Biswajit Mishra and his journey with Lendbox

I’ve been working in the Supply Chain Industry for the last 10 years and was drawing a healthy Rs 8,40,000 annually. Things were going well on both the professional as well as personal fronts.

But as we all know, life is full of unexpected events. During January 2016, my father got a major stroke and the doctor mandated a highly complex surgery costing atleast Rs 5,00,000. Now given my income and the fact that my wife works as well I had some savings which could cover the cost partly and for the rest of the amount I thought I would take a loan from a bank. This is when I realized how high street banks treat their customers. Being a valued customer of my bank for the last 8 years, I assumed of a hassle free personal loan process, but my application got rejected because I had recently switched jobs. Other banks also didn’t entertain my application either stating the same reason. I was frustrated and disappointed with the theoretical approach that banks use to assess a borrower. I started discussions with a few private moneylenders, but didn’t want to go that way as it turns out to be too expensive usually.

Then, when pretty much all hope was lost, one of my friends suggested Lendbox. I registered as a borrower with little hope and submitted all the required documents as I had nothing to lose. Within a couple of days, I got a call from the Lendbox team informing me about the activation of my profile and suggested me to start sending proposals to active investors on the platform. Intrigued and desperate, I started sending proposals to the investors immediately. The very next day I got several emails from Lendbox stating that out of the 18 proposals I had sent, 11 had been approved accumulating to a loan amount of Rs 3,20,000 with an average interest rate of 16%, almost the same as a personal loan interest rate from a bank, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.

The Lendbox disbursal team immediately confirmed the loan from the investors and sent me the agreements for further processing. Within 2-3 days, the whole process was done and my loan was disbursed by the investors.

“Lendbox has been the only ray of hope when, others closed their doors on me.”

I am quite speechless and extremely grateful to Lendbox for helping me in my time of need and creating a system where the credit appraisal is fair and practical rather than theoretical as well as faster than any bank.

Lendbox investor approves loans as per his own value system – “debt consolidation and medical emergencies are needs which I like to support”

Apart from working in a large MNC (Toshiba), self-proclaimed “Stock market investor”, Rakesh Kumar, spends most of his idle time and energy investing in software and real estate companies on the Indian bourses. When his wife read about Lendbox in an article in The Economic Times and brought it to his attention, it immediately piqued Rakesh’s investment curiosity. “Right away, I saw P2P lending as an appealing, unique business model that nicely fit a niche that needed to be filled, and I had to have a piece of the action”

P2P Lending: Getting Started

Rakesh started by committing a small amount on Lendbox and recommends the same for new lenders. “I wanted to test the platform first and get my feet wet to see how the process worked before committing a higher amount” he says. As he got more confidence, Rakesh began to invest the funds he had saved and to-date has about Rs 7,40,000 in debt assets acquired on Lendbox. He currently estimates his average return to be around 18%.

Great Returns, Lower Risk – Finding the Balance.

“It’s definitely a continuous learning process,” Rakesh recounts when asked how he gets such high returns on Lendbox. “At first, I just set a minimum percentage rate for loans I was willing to consider,” he says. “Soon, I had a few Rs 80,000 loans out with 3-4 investors per loan but thought I could go higher with my own commitment as well”

Now, Rakesh limits his bids to Rs 30,000 per loan and his portfolio is spread among 25 borrowers. It may take a little more work to find the right 20 or 30 people to lend to, but as per Rakesh, it’s worth it as the quality of the borrower is paramount and he is confident that Lendbox only provides high quality borrowers given his experience with the platform.

P2P Lending: Learn as You Earn

“I look for a number of things,” Rakesh says when asked how he assesses borrowers, “But mostly, I’ve just learned from experience.” Rakesh has had more success giving personal loans to those who may not have the best CIBIL score, but have a good salary and career history (especially in a reputed organization or MNC) and are seeking modest loan amounts. He has also had great experience with self-employed people and has narrowed it down to an individual’s intent to pay more than anything else.

“I enjoy bidding in ways that reflect my own values,” Rakesh says. “I’m not sure I want to fund someone’s vacation, but debt consolidation and emergency medical needs are something I support and I’m glad to help.”

Story Of Rajesh Tiwari : How Lendbox Helped Mr. Rajesh, When He Needed Most

Middle class citizens usually tend to have a cash constraint given that their income is not much different from their expenses. I, Rajesh Tiwari belong to the same class of people, a while back I faced a sudden need for Rs 2,30,000 due to a medical emergency in the family. I knocked the doors of almost all the banks and known financial institutions for a personal loan, but it was all in vain. My CIBIL score is low due to an old delayed payment which I cleared eventually. My salary does not meet the eligibility criterion for almost all financial institutions either leading to an outright rejection from wherever I went.

Day by day, it was getting more and more stressful, but one day my wife saw a post on Facebook about Lendbox and recommended that I should give it a shot by applying for a loan on the website. I immediately registered on the platform and fulfilled all the requirements from my end. After sometime, my account got activated and I started sending proposals to investors right away, one day after it, an investor accepted my proposal and funded me with half of the requested loan amount, after that two more investor followed and I got completely funded within next two days.

I found Lendbox’s platform extremely easy to use and one of the most convenient ways to get hassle free personal loans and with the support team of Lendbox being one of the most prompt I’ve ever seen across the services industry, applying and then finally getting a loan through other peers spread across the country was an absolute breeze.

I want to thank team Lendbox for creating this platform and being a leading force in spreading the concept of P2P Lending in India which is making finance more accessible to a large unaddressed population.

ING, Khazanah Invest in wolaidai.com (backed by WeLab)

Historically, banks and registered money lenders have been the only institutions catering to the business of lending to individual consumers and to small and large businesses. They have the resources and access to assess a borrower’s creditworthiness, the regulations for approving the loan and disbursement. However, this process does have some key inefficiencies like standard interest rate for all loan seekers despite having different data points () like CIBIL score, source of income etc. This method is also highly restrictive in nature as well excluding a large percentage of quality borrowers.

This phenomenon has left ample room for the growth of online lending marketplaces aka online peer-to-peer lending platforms – that leverage technology to connect creditworthy borrowers with retail and institutional investors. This industry is growing at such a rapid pace that the high street banks have had to sit up and take notice of this financial disruption. ING, a top notch bank in Europe, bought a stake in Hong Kong based wolaidai.com (backed by WeLab). ING, the Malaysian state investment fund Khazanah and China’s Guangdong Technology Financial Group together invested a total of $160 million in the Chinese P2P lending company.

This validates the fact that online peer-to-peer lending is here to stay and also pose a significant threat to the traditional banking system. So what are you waiting for, register with Lendbox today at www.lendbox.in

Source – http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-20/ing-khazanah-invest-in-fintech-firm-backed-by-billionaire-li-ijmg9rru