Lendingkart chased Covid-era scale, and its $700M value fell below $100M

Lendingkart, India's leading MSME-focused credit platform with over 110,000 active loan accounts and ₹6,000 crore in assets under management by September 2023, bought fellow lender Upwards in 2022 to push into personal loans — an idea that came from its lead investor Fullerton Financial Holdings, a wholly-owned Temasek subsidiary. The company had prioritised scale above quality of lending during its rapid expansion during Covid.

It caught up in 2024: the valuation nosedived from $700 million in May to less than $100 million by October, and Lendingkart ran out of cash. Fullerton panicked, ousted founder and CEO Harshvardhan Lunia from management and the board, raised its stake from 38% to 77%, seized control of the business and bailed the company out.

In November 2025 Lunia, his father Raichand and brother Anand filed an NCLT petition calling Fullerton's motive 'mala fide' and 'oppressive' and in violation of a shareholders' agreement, seeking an independent investigation into how the company was devalued by more than 90% in a few quarters; the tribunal heard the case on June 18, 2026. The founders of Upwards were separately pursuing Lendingkart for ₹80–90 crore in compensation, and a PwC valuation put the company at $55 million on a discounted-cash-flow basis.

Covid-era expansion was bought by loosening credit standards, and the quality deficit surfaced all at once.

Valuation had been anchored in a net-asset-value-plus-excess-return method; honest marking erased the premium.

Running out of cash gave the largest investor both the emergency and the leverage to take over.

The founder's marginalisation during the Upwards deal left the company steered by creditors rather than builders.

In lending, scale you bought with sloppy credit is negative equity: the growth multiple collapses to book value the moment anyone marks the loans honestly.

Fullerton-controlled Lendingkart continued operating while the NCLT weighed the founders' oppression petition; the hearing began June 18, 2026. The Upwards founders' compensation claim and the question of how the company lost more than 90% of its value in quarters remained before the tribunal.