Kaaj, a burgeoning FinTech startup, has announced it secured $3.8 million in seed funding from prominent investors Kindred Ventures and Better Tomorrow Ventures. The capital infusion will accelerate the company's mission to revolutionize small business lending by automating the often-cumbersome credit risk analysis process, making it faster and more cost-effective for financial institutions.
The company was co-founded by Shivi Sharma, who brings a decade of experience in credit risk from institutions like American Express and Varo Bank, and her husband, Utsav Shah. Sharma observed a critical inefficiency in traditional lending: teams spent equal amounts of time analyzing loan applications regardless of their size, rendering the assessment of smaller loans an unprofitable and time-consuming endeavor for lenders.
“She watched as the vast majority of small business owners couldn’t access the capital they needed to grow, simply because the economics didn’t work for banks,” Shah told TechCrunch.
Recognizing this significant market gap, the duo identified an opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence. “Between our skills in building AI-powered decision-making systems at scale and our expertise in credit risk and fraud risk assessments in banking in financial services, we realized we could apply next-gen AI agent workflows to solve this decades-old problem,” Shah added.
Transforming Underwriting with AI
Launched in 2024, Kaaj's platform automates credit risk analysis, drastically cutting down the underwriting process from days to mere minutes. The company reports having already processed over $5 billion worth of loan applications, with a client roster that includes Amur Equipment Finance and Fundr.
Traditionally, when a small business applies for a loan, underwriters spend days manually verifying documents such as financial statements, bank statements, and tax returns, then logging this information into their Loan Origination System (LOS). Kaaj streamlines this by using AI to identify, classify, verify, and organize all necessary information directly into the LOS. Beyond data management, the platform also conducts assessments to detect document tampering, assisting fraud prevention teams.
Kaaj seamlessly integrates with existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Microsoft, and can even flag whether a business meets a lender’s specific policy criteria. This level of automation significantly boosts efficiency.
“This allows a team processing 500 applications monthly to handle 20,000 applications with the same staff, making smaller loans economically viable,” explained Utsav Shah, Kaaj’s CEO.
The ultimate goal is to increase access to capital for small businesses by making it more cost-efficient for banks to assess and approve their loan applications.
Competitive Edge and Future Growth
While competitors like Middesk, Ocrolus, and MoneyThumb operate in similar spaces, Kaaj aims to differentiate itself by automating the *entire* credit analysis process, rather than just isolated parts of it. “We do this by deploying agentic AI workflows that mimic their teams, to help lenders analyze end-to-end loan packages,” Sharma elaborated.
The newly acquired seed capital will be strategically deployed to accelerate product development and expand Kaaj’s reach among independent and small business lenders. The company plans to enhance its AI agent capabilities, broaden its module offerings, and scale its customer base of lenders and brokers beyond its current footprint.
Overall, Shah and Sharma envision Kaaj as a catalyst for revolutionizing small business lending, bringing much-needed automation to a sector still heavily reliant on paper-based processes. “By automating the science of credit analysis, we free up human underwriters to focus on the art of deal-making and subjective assessment, which is their true competitive advantage,” Shah concluded.
