Kaaj is trying to change how lenders handle credit risk, and the idea started with a simple problem. Shivi Sharma spent years working in credit risk at companies like American Express and Varo Bank. She kept noticing that teams spent the same amount of time reviewing every loan, even when some were only worth a fraction of the larger ones. The effort rarely made sense, and the economics were even worse.
Small loans took too much time and too many people. Lenders often avoided them because the cost of underwriting wiped out any profit. That meant countless small business owners never got the capital they needed to grow. Sharma and her husband, Utsav Shah, realized there was a clear opportunity in that gap.
Shah said that she saw how many founders were rejected for reasons that had nothing to do with their business health. Banks simply could not afford the manual work required to review so many small applications. Their combined experience in AI systems and credit risk helped them see a path forward. They believed agentic AI could streamline the entire process and bring a level of automation the industry had been missing for decades.
The couple launched Kaaj in 2024 to automate credit risk assessments so lenders could move from days of work to just minutes. Since then, Kaaj has processed more than five billion dollars in loan applications and now works with lenders like Amur Equipment Finance and Fundr. The company has raised a new seed round of three point eight million dollars from Kindred Ventures and Better Tomorrow Ventures.
The product is designed to fit into the exact workflow lenders already use. A small business applies for a loan and uploads documents such as tax returns, financial statements, and bank records. Normally an underwriter would spend days verifying all of this. Kaaj scans everything, identifies the information, checks for accuracy, verifies authenticity, and organizes it directly into a lender’s Loan Origination System.
The platform also checks for signs of document tampering to support fraud teams. It connects to CRM tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft. It can even show underwriters whether a business meets the lender’s policy requirements before they dive in.
Shah said that a team that currently handles five hundred applications a month can process twenty thousand with the same number of people using Kaaj. That shift could make smaller loans profitable for the first time, which may open the door for many more small businesses to access bank financing.
The market has other players such as Middesk, Ocrolus, and MoneyThumb. Sharma believes that Kaaj stands out because it automates the entire credit review instead of only parts of it. She said that the company uses agentic AI workflows that behave like a lender’s internal team and can analyze a full loan package from start to finish.
The new capital will help Kaaj expand its product line and reach more lenders that work with small and independent businesses. Sharma said the company is focused on improving its AI agents, adding more modules, and growing its customer base beyond its current network.
Both founders hope Kaaj becomes one of the companies that reshape small business lending. The process is still heavily paper based and slow. They believe that automating the science behind credit analysis allows human underwriters to focus on the parts that matter most. That includes negotiation, building trust, and making the nuanced decisions that require human judgment.
