Yesterday's article in the AFR valuing Indebted at $350m .. a similar business in a bigger market with good partners
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The company has built a digital platform used by companies such as buy now, pay later firms Klarna, AfterPay and Zip. It aims to personalise debt collection and make it a less intimidating process. It uses channels such as WhatsApp to communicate and gives customers a self-service portal to manage their repayments.
Because it is in the debt-collection sector, it benefits from consumers coming under cost-of-living pressure. InDebted chief executive Josh Foreman said the company had kept up an annual revenue growth rate of 110 per cent every year since it was founded in 2016, turning over $38 million this year. It now delivers annual recurring revenue of $48 million
’The early success of InDebted was partly due to its launch around the time buy now, pay later firms were taking off, creating a cohort of tech-savvy debtors. Zip was one of its biggest early customers and InDebted launched in Canada and then the United States as a result of winning a deal with Afterpay.It is about to expand in Mexico because of a deal with Commonwealth Bank-backed Klarna. Mr Foreman said he planned to acquire firms in other markets as part of his international expansion plans. It already owns Missouri-based rival Delta Outsource.As a debt collection specialist, InDebted is able to see how cost-of-living pressures affect people in the countries in which it operates.Mr Foreman said Australia was holding steady in terms of people getting into financial difficulty, and was doing better than other countries in handling higher interest rates.‘‘It’s very different market to market and while we’ve seen little to no real deterioration in Australia, we are absolutely starting to see charge-off rates and delinquency rates increase in the US,’’ he added yesterday.‘‘It’s very obvious in the US, and I think we’ve seen different spikes in markets like the UK, particularly with the energy crisis.’’
BNPL’s rapid growth needed a solution quick, and these larger companies have helped bring InDebted into global markets with them – which has been a very shrewd growth strategy.’’Carthona Capital partner Dean Dorrell, who is on InDebted’s board, said the fund had invested seven times in the company, had not sold any shares and now owned about 15 per cent.‘‘We think the business is only just getting started. It is truly a global company in a massive industry that has had little technology applied to it,’’ Mr Dorrell said. ‘‘We believe that InDebted is emerging as the global leader in collections and revenue of several hundred millions of dollars is within grasp.’’
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