Pavestone Leads $3 Million Seed Round in Lending Solutions Startup Uncia

Uncia, an AI-native lending infrastructure startup founded in 2020 by Hari Padmanabhan, has raised $3 million (approximately Rs 25 crore) in a seed funding round led by Hyderabad-based venture capital firm Pavestone. The infusion of capital is earmarked to accelerate Uncia’s growth in India and underwrite its planned expansion into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and North America.

"With its cloud-first, AI-powered platform, Uncia enables financial institutions to rapidly deploy, scale, and manage complex lending products independently, without relying on IT teams or facing long delays typically associated with traditional systems," the company said.

Context and product offering

Uncia positions itself as a solution to the entrenched legacy systems that many banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) continue to use. The startup offers a suite of modular products intended to cover the end-to-end digital lending lifecycle:

• UnciaPrime — Loan Origination System
• UnciaLeap — Loan Management System
• UnciaFlow — Supply Chain Finance and Digital Lending

The company describes its platform as AI-native and cloud-first, designed to let financial institutions configure, deploy and manage complex lending products without lengthy IT projects. According to the company, Uncia has processed over Rs 2 lakh crore in assets under management (AUM) for leading financial institutions, including some of India’s top lenders.

Funding partner and scale

The round was led by Pavestone, whose Technology Fund — with a corpus of Rs 816 crore — targets B2B technology companies solving critical business challenges and demonstrating product-market fit and market traction. Pavestone is based in Hyderabad and has positioned this fund to back enterprise and fintech startups that can scale across markets.

The $3 million seed investment will be used to deepen Uncia’s footprint in its domestic market while enabling entry into international markets. The company’s emphasis on AI-driven automation and cloud deployment is intended to reduce time-to-market for lenders seeking to launch new loan products or digitize operations.

Outlook

Uncia’s immediate priorities following the seed round include accelerating product development, expanding commercial partnerships with banks and NBFCs in India, and establishing go-to-market presence in the MENA region and North America. The startup’s claim of having processed more than Rs 2 lakh crore AUM provides a commercial reference point as it seeks to convert the capital infusion into wider deployment.

For Pavestone, the investment continues its stated focus on B2B technology firms with proven traction. For Uncia, the backing from a sizeable technology fund provides resources to scale sales, engineering and regional expansion efforts at a time when lenders are increasingly evaluating cloud and AI solutions to replace legacy lending stacks.