Consumer lending platform for working professionals EarlySalary said that it expects six more deals to take place in the next one year that are in line with the deal it closed recently with Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) HDB Financial Services.

Akshay Mehrotra, Co-founder and CEO, EarlySalary said there are eight co-lenders on EarlySalary already apart from the company’s own platform and it expects many more to come in.

The HDB tie-up aims to build momentum in the impact categories of skill upgradation, education loans and health-care finance. The association will also facilitate building a large consumer lending book with EarlySalary, Mehrotra explained.

“With partners like this, we are going to build the AUM game which means we’re going to become a much larger financial entity,” he said. “Digital fintechs have been known to do volume but never build an AUM but now the AUM play is coming in as stability in the business model is coming in.”

He said EarlySalary has disbursed close to Rs 4000 crore on the platform cumulatively, and typically does close to Rs 200 crores a month. This means that now leverage is becoming the most important component of the business and co-lending is the largest fueler of leverage.

Mehrotra went on to add that this is the first time that a large NBFChas agreed to do such a large trade with a company of EarlySalary’s size. He said that so far debt trades of Rs 1000 crores have not been done.

“When I get access to such partnerships, I can bring in a liquidity pool,” he said. “And I can extend such transactions to my customer base which fuels the next level of growth. We are playing the AUM game now to say that I will expand my customer base, I will expand my overall trajectory, I would like to become a 10x size company from where I am to what I want to be.”

EarlySalary also provides additional facilities like EMI credits and No-Cost EMI offerings and has raised over $32 million in equity from Eight Roads Ventures and Chiratae Ventures in its Series C and has raised over $120 crore in debt funding since inception in 2015.