A recent study conducted by IndiaLends – a leading digital lending platform – on India’s youth(aged between 20-35),revealed that wedding loans constituted of 33%, highest amongst other purposes, during the second wave of the pandemic as compared to 22% during the first wave. Likewise, business loans too saw an increase from 16% to 23% during the second wave of pandemic. Interestingly, loans for household purposes saw a dip from 40% to 24% during the same period.
IndiaLends conducted the study on loan trends among young Indians on the occasion of International Youth Day. The study was conducted among both salaried and self-employed young Indians across nine major cities — Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Pune for the following time period – August 2020 to March 2021 and April 2021 to July 2021. In all, 11,000 respondents were evaluated for their loan requirements in nine main categories, namely wedding, business, education, travel, household, medical, two-wheeler and debt consolidation.
This surge in applications for wedding loans was owing to a year-long delay in their wedding plans brought about by the pandemic. With a fear of job insecurity, the second wave of Covid brought a new wave of entrepreneurship among youth, boosting loan applications to start small business. It was delightful to note that 10% applications for both weddings as well as for business pursposes were received from women borrowers.
IndiaLends Founder and CEO Gaurav Chopra said, “We are thrilled to see continuous shift among youth behaviour and mindset during the last 17 months of the pandemic. India’s youth have proven to be adapative with the changing circumstances. They are now better prepared to meet their financial needs and are gradually imbibing financial discipline. Their adapatibility quotient gets them ahead of their previous generation. We at IndiaLends wish to be at the forefront of this dynamic fast-changing ecosystem by remodelling our existing products to the new ever-evolving world, catering to the needs of the younger population thus also fostering financial inclusion for the community at large.”
Loan applications for household expenditure saw a dip during in the second wave concluding that youth are now better prepared to meet their financial needs.
The average ticket-size of loans for wedding was Rs.4.13 Lac, followed by medical expenses Rs. 4 Lac, household expenses Rs.3.43 Lac and for business Rs. 2.62 Lac. IndiaLends received about 56% of loan applications from Tier-2 cities both during the first and the second wave of the pandemic. Among others, applications for the purpose of education, car & two-wheeler loans, travel loans etc. were almost similar both in the first and the second waves. Applications for medical loans did witness a little spike in the second wave owing to the severity of the situation and the impact it had on the health of most of the population.
About IndiaLends
IndiaLends is an online marketplace for credit products that include personal loans, credit cards, gold loans etc. Available on both web and mobile app, it also offers its users free credit reports and other financial education tools. The company was founded in 2015 by former UK’s Capital One banker Gaurav Chopra who has more than 15 years of domain expertise in driving innovation in digital finance, credit analytics and mobile payments in the Indian and global markets. He is also the founding member of Digital Lending Association of India (DLAI).
IndiaLends is currently working with 55+ partners which includes of major PSU and private sector banks, NBFCs, fintechs and P2P lenders. The company also offers an open-API model for banks and NBFCs to partner with them through a plug-n-play approach. IndiaLends currently has a customer base of over 8M and has disbursed loan worth Rs.2000 crore. For further information, please visit www.indialends.com.
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