Easy and Fast Trade Loans for Small Businesses – FinBridgeX© from ProFinTech

In this post, we will briefly touch upon where things are at ProFinTech and give a quick peek into our jam session with a few known Chartered Accountants in Hyderabad.

ProFinTech is in Beta phase

We have been busy at building our Tech stack powered by advanced technologies like AI & ML, Blockchain and Data models, which would

• reduce complexity in traditional financing processes that MSMEs have to follow
• help MSMEs access easy and fast trade loans at affordable cost, especially, at transaction level 
• provide diverse data driven ‘trade-embedded financing platform’ for B2B marketplaces

While we scale-up the Beta project phase, our teams working with ProFinTech’s ‘Anchor Customers’ are drawing great feedback and lessons from various iterations; and they are feeding these learnings into the final product. Besides this heady action in the background, our Founding team has been into a series of meetings with big financiers (Banks, NBFCs and new-age financiers), B2B marketplaces including Agri-eco systems etc. So far, there has been a pretty encouraging response for our Trade-Embedded Financing Platform from the market.

How does our ‘Trade Embedded Financing platform’ help Small businesses get ‘Easy and Fast Trade loans’

Embedded finance or Embedded banking, in simple words, brings financial services to the customer in the exact moment when it is needed. It is the seamless integration of financial products and services into non-financial contexts for convenient and easy-to-use customer experiences. Some financial services of this kind are Payments, Credit, Insurance etc. The financial service or solution that we are building is related to Trade/MSME financing and we are implementing this for a set of B2B marketplaces. Let’s consider a scenario : The owner of a small business enterprise wants loan support or financing, after he decided to buy a specific quantity of raw materials from a seller on a B2B marketplace. His business enterprise is like many small businesses that often run short of funds and don’t have quick access to loans or financing. But with ProFinTech’ embedded trade financing solution on the B2B marketplace, this owner of a small business enterprise owner can buy the raw materials for his business and get financing for this transaction, easily, within a couple of days. He, in fact, need not move out of the B2B marketplace to get these loan options. Everything happens on the same B2B marketplace itself.

How is this made possible – Our Tech Stack goes beyond demanding MSMEs for kgs of collateral and documentation in order to evaluate their credit-worthiness. Instead, our tech stack will provide 360 degree visibility to the ongoing trade flows for every MSME, and full-rounded analysis of the MSME’s credit-worthiness to banks/NBFCs, so that they could take faster and informed credit decisions.

FinBridgeX© from ProFinTech

On the 7th Nov 2023, our Founding team, Tech/Product and Data team, had a jam session with a few well known CAs (a crucial community of experts who interact with Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, on a regular basis) in the T-hub, Hyderabad : during this two hour session, they presented the team’s collective Tech and Finance domain expertise, and demonstrated ProFinTech’s disruptive product, FinBridgeX — one-of-a-kind Financing tool that makes financing (the process of getting loans)  ‘Automated’, ‘Integrated’ and ‘Affordable’ for small businesses and lets them stay in control of their financing process.

ProFinTech’s FinBridgeX© addresses two challenges faced by MSMEs – Credit gap and Delayed payments

Despite many business and MSME-friendly schemes from the Government, a large part of Micro and Small enterprises, still, are struggling with financing as well as regular cash-flows that are needed for running their business/operations. Let us look at some data points –

• The massive gap between the demand and supply of Credit to MSMEs in India – is estimated to be around ₹ 25,00,000 crores (USD 300 Billion)
• Delayed payments from buyers to MSMEs continues to be a big problem and is estimated to be more than ₹ 10,70,000 crores (USD 200 Billion)

These existential challenges of delayed cash flow realizations coupled with lack of access to credit can have serious impact on businesses, cripple industries and challenge India’s growth aspirations. To take these problems head-on, ProFinTech has developed FinBridgeX© – a first of its kind TechFin product that creates a 24/7 financing capability for small businesses. Our FinBridgeX© is built on a set of fundamentals or principles. They are   

1. Tech and Data : Dynamic business & non-business Data will replace static physical collaterals. Our tech stack will provide 360 degree visibility to the ongoing trade flows for every MSME, and full-rounded analysis of the MSME’s credit-worthiness to banks/NBFCs , so that they could take faster and informed credit decisions.
2. Trade-integrated : Trade and Financing are interrelated. Facilitating real time, & contextual data exchange allows Banks & NBFCs  to fund small-tickets trades with confidence.
3. Discoverability : MSMEs don’t have time to market themselves, nor they have the bandwidth to build strong brand around themselves. On our platform, MSMEs will have a higher chance of being discovered by financiers. Which means, easier and faster access to financing.
4. Automated : Everything around us, from our Mobile phones to Airports to Payments, is getting automated. Financing, especially, for MSMEs, should also be automated. And we are working towards “Automatic delivery of Finance” to the critical engine of India’s economy.

Sounds interesting? Should you want to know more about our Embedded Trade Financing Platform or solution, do leave your message here. We would love to present our solution to you.

Post is written from : Notes taken while having a conversation with our Founder Ravi Tanniru, Jyothsna