Chennai-based non-banking monetary firm (NBFC) Dugar Finance has raised $5 million (Rs 45 crore) in a pre-Sequence A funding spherical led by HegdInvst, a Class II AIF targeted on development fairness investments.

The agency beforehand raised about $18 million (Rs 160 crore) in structured debt from a mixture of home and worldwide lenders, together with Symbiotics and British Worldwide Funding (BII), together with a number of Indian banks in December 2025.

Based in 1987, Dugar Finance is concentrated on serving the underserved markets throughout tier 2-6 markets. The agency claims that it at present manages property underneath administration (AUM) of about Rs 400 crore, with a five-year CAGR of round 55%. It additionally claims to have maintained gross NPAs under 1.5% and a return on property (RoA) of roughly 5%.

Whereas traditionally anchored in business and passenger car finance, Dugar Finance is increasing its presence in secured MSME lending, with the goal of constructing a extra balanced and diversified mortgage ebook throughout each segments.

It’ll use the raised capital to scale its secured MSME lending franchise alongside its established car finance enterprise, and to deepen its presence throughout tier 2-6 underserved semi-urban and rural markets.

“We’re getting into the subsequent part of development, the place diversification and institutional disciplined scaling turn out to be crucial. Car finance gave us a robust basis, and we are actually leveraging that to construct a broader secured lending platform,” mentioned Ramesh Dugar, Founder and Managing Director, Dugar Finance

The recent capital will probably be deployed to strengthen expertise infrastructure, advance analytics-led underwriting and centralised threat methods, and buying senior expertise throughout crucial capabilities.

“Dugar Finance combines a stable promoter group and a transparent intent in the direction of making a professionally run NBFC targeted on Tier 2 to six cities. We see vital potential in its technique to scale a nicely ruled & diversified secured lending platform” mentioned Aditya Bhandari, Founder and Managing Associate, HegdInvst.

Past capital, HegdInvst will actively help Dugar Finance in strengthening its governance framework, entry to worldwide capital, and aiding in constructing their skilled administration group.