AI-Native Lending Powerhouse Uncia Secures INR 25 Crore From Pavestone VC to Fuel Global Expansion

In a move that signals a major shift in the fintech landscape, Chennai-based AI-Native lending technology firm Uncia Technologies Private Limited has officially announced the closure of its first funding round, securing INR 25 crores from Pavestone VC, a prominent Hyderabad-based venture capital firm. This strategic investment marks a deliberate inflection point for Uncia, a company that spent the previous five years focusing exclusively on product development, market validation, and the cultivation of institutional trust before ever seeking external capital. The infusion of funds is earmarked to accelerate Uncia’s dominant growth within India while simultaneously financing the company’s aggressive entry into the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and North American markets. Furthermore, Uncia has declared its intent to pursue a public listing within the next few years, positioning this capital injection as the opening chapter of a multi-year journey toward becoming a globally scaled and publicly accountable lending technology institution.

Uncia’s trajectory stands as a rare anomaly in an era defined by heavily funded fintechs and venture-backed growth stories, as the company chose to let its product performance precede its pitch deck. Operating without external capital since its inception, the firm was forced to be relentlessly precise regarding its engineering and target market, resulting in an AI-native platform suite that now powers loan origination, loan management, and supply chain finance operations for India’s most respected financial institutions. Hari Padmanabhan, Chairman of Uncia, emphasized that the decision to build before raising was a deliberate choice rooted in the conviction that solving the right problems would lead to market validation. He noted that the company currently manages over INR 2 lakh crore in cumulative assets under management (AUM) for top Indian Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), asserting that this funding represents a gear shift rather than a beginning, providing the necessary capital to take their validated products to a global stage in partnership with Pavestone.

The core of Uncia’s technological advantage lies in its "self-serve lending infrastructure" philosophy, which allows financial institutions to configure, launch, and manage complex lending products independently, bypassing traditional IT dependencies and implementation delays. This capability is underpinned by two years of dedicated AI research conducted in collaboration with IIT Madras at the IITM Technology Research Park. Early adopters of these models are already reporting measurable results in direct cost efficiencies and smarter underwriting outcomes. Srikanth Tanikella, Managing Partner at Pavestone Capital, highlighted that Pavestone focuses on backing businesses solving structural problems in large enterprises with clear paths to profitability. He noted that while the lending ecosystem is expanding, legacy systems continue to constrain flexibility and intelligence, making Uncia’s unified, cloud-first platform and "pay-as-you-grow" scalability a vital solution for modern lenders.

As a Chennai-based leader in digital infrastructure, Uncia Technologies continues to power the banking and NBFC sectors through its three integrated platforms: UnciaPrime for loan origination, UnciaLeap for loan management, and UnciaFlow for supply chain finance and digital lending. With a current processing volume exceeding INR 2 lakh crore AUM, the company has solidified its status as a critical partner for India’s largest lenders. This growth is supported by Pavestone VC’s Technology Fund, which operates with an INR 816 crore corpus aimed at fostering early growth-stage B2B technology companies that address critical challenges for public and private enterprises. By combining Uncia’s validated market traction with Pavestone’s strategic smart capital, this partnership is set to redefine the global standards of lending technology, transitioning a homegrown Indian success story into a formidable international institution.