Small business lending is getting a high-tech upgrade. Kaaj, the startup co-founded by Shivi Sharma and Utsav Shah, just closed a $3.8 million seed round from Kindred Ventures and Better Tomorrow Ventures, aiming to accelerate, innovate, and make credit risk analysis more cost-effective.
Sharma, who spent over a decade in credit risk at American Express and Varo Bank, noticed a recurring problem: banks were spending the same amount of time reviewing small and large loans. “The economics just didn’t work for smaller loans,” she explains. Many small business owners ended up denied the funding they needed simply because underwriting them wasn’t profitable.
Kaaj tackles this problem with AI-powered automation. The platform analyses loan applications, verifies financial documents, detects fraud, and organises data into lenders’ systems, all in minutes rather than days. By integrating with CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft, Kaaj ensures underwriters can focus on high-value decisions while the AI handles repetitive tasks.
“The impact is huge,” says Shah. “A team processing 500 applications a month can now handle 20,000 with the same staff. Smaller loans finally make sense for banks.”
Since its launch in 2024, Kaaj has already processed over $5 billion in client applications, including those for Amur Equipment Finance and Fundr. Unlike competitors that automate parts of the process, Kaaj uses agentic AI workflows to replicate an underwriter’s entire analysis from start to finish.
The new funding will accelerate product development and expand the platform to more lenders and brokers. Kaaj hopes to revolutionise small business lending by bringing efficiency, scale, and automation to a process that has remained largely manual for decades.
“By automating the science of credit assessment, we free human underwriters to focus on the art of deal-making,” Shah says.