Kaaj Raises $3.8 Mn To Automate Small Business Lending

Agentic AI credit intelligence startup Kaaj has raised $3.8 Mn (around INR 33.7 Cr) in its seed funding round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from Better Tomorrow Ventures, Karman Ventures, Pythia Ventures and Coughdrop Capital. 

Besides, several senior executives from fintech and AI sectors, including Sardine AI’s Soups Ranjan, Brex’s Rahul Ramesh, TreasuryPrime’s Remy Carole, Affirm’s Sip Jiyane, Pony Money’s Steven Ma, also partook in the round.

Founded in 2024 by Utsav Shah and Shivi Sharma, Kaaj has built an AI-driven underwriting infrastructure for small-business lending. Its platform uses agentic AI workflows to analyse entire loan packages — from business verification and cash-flow assessment to asset valuation and risk analysis — and produce decision-ready files in under three minutes.

The founders expertise mirrors their product offering. While Shah comes from AI-driven decision-making roles at Uber and Cruise, Sharma has long worked in credit and fraud risk at major financial firms like American Express and Varo Bank.

The San Francisco-based startup says it has already processed over $5 Bn in loan applications since inception and counts lenders such as Amur Equipment Finance, Quality Equipment Finance, and Fundr as its customers. 

Kaaj plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate product development and expand into the $1.7 Tn US small-business lending market and the $1.3 Tn equipment finance segment. As of now, the startup is largely focussed on the US market. 

The startup aims to address a long-standing gap in the credit disbursal sector: the economics of underwriting smaller loans. As per US Federal Reserve’s 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, half of small-business applicants fail to secure the full capital they need, largely because loans below $1 Mn are unprofitable for lenders. 

Kaaj says its automation makes smaller loans viable by reducing underwriting time from days to minutes.

The platform also targets the consistency problem in underwriting. Kaaj claims its AI agents deliver standardised, transparent, and audit-ready analyses regardless of day, workload, or human variability — a critical requirement in a highly regulated market. 

It integrates with systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, and Zoho, enabling lenders and brokers to onboard within three weeks.

The funding announcement comes at a time when agentic AI space has seen a flurry of funding announcements in 2025. 

For instance, UnifyApps raised $50 Mn to enhance its enterprise AI stack, Lyzr secured $8 Mn funding to help companies build custom AI agents, Mem0 raised $24 Mn to scale its AI memory infrastructure powering intelligent systems and Graas.ai, which bagged $9 Mn to expand its agentic AI stack for ecommerce.

Moreover, well established names from Gupshup to Zomato to Zoho Corporation are also building in-house AI agents. 

With the overall boom in AI and automation, the more niche segment, agentic AI, has also carved a market size worth $5.1 Bn in 2024. Meanwhile, India’s GenAI market, which includes more than 100 generative AI startups, is projected to surpass the $17 Bn mark by 2030.

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