Untapped Capital Starvation in Indian MSME Sector a Great Boon for FinTech Startups

#sme #msme #capital #founders #startupindia #startupbharat #aatmanirbharbharat #fintech

With my more than 20 years experience in dealing with thousands of MSME businesses, the reason I have seen for their failure is not lack of talent, market, labour or technology, but starvation due to lack of access to timely and adequate capital.

So FinTech startups in India have huge unimaginable potential and also can do immense yeoman service to our country just by channelising savings and providing timely and adequate finance to MSME sector.

All the best!

Startup News: Edtech startup Bada Business aims to train 10M entrepreneurs in 6 months

#edtech #startups #SME #business #enterpreneurship #digital

Education technology startup Bada Business on Friday said it aims to train 10 million entrepreneurs over the next six months as part of its 'India Revival Mission' for micro, small, and medium enterprises.

Addressing a virtual press conference, Bada Business founder and CEO Vivek Bindra also said it plans to double its presence to 150 offices in the country by the year-end, from 75 offices at present.

The 'India Revival Mission' offers hand-holding solutions to MSMEs and skill training for digital transformation to lakhs of such businesses.

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Edtech startup Bada Business aims to train 10M entrepreneurs in 6 months

Education technology startup Bada Business on Friday said it aims to train 10 million entrepreneurs over the next six months as part of its 'India Revival Mission' for micro, small, and medium enterprises. Addressing a virtual press conference, Bada Business founder and CEO Vivek Bindra also said it plans to double its presence to 150 offices in the country by the year-end, from 75 offices at present.

FinTech Startup Funding Alert: Memo Bank launches business offering and lands €20m

#fintech #bank #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks #lending #lendingsolutions #lendingtech #startups #smesector #smes #fundingalert #startupfunding

Formerly known as Margo Bank, the newly named Memo Bank, a French fintech, is launching its exclusive business offering, which is set to tap small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Alongside its launch and lending licence, the start-up has landed a €20 million funding round led by Paris-based, BlackFin Capital Partners | Investors in Financial Services, and existing French investors, Daphni and Bpifrance Digital Venture.

The bank targets SMEs that generate over €2 million a year and houses more than ten employees. Its key focus will be on delivering paperless credit lines to businesses in just a few days, directly competing with France’s online lenders, rather than the country’s neobanks.

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Memo Bank launches business offering and lands €20m - FinTech Futures

Memo Bank has launched its business offering which is set to tap SMEs, in addition to obtaining a licence and securing a €20 million funding round.

Startup Strategy: Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options

#MSME #SME #lendingsolutions #lending #credit #fintech #startups #startupstrategy

Santander’s invoice and expenses app, Asto, has partnered with alternative UK lender, Funding Options, to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Funding Option’s CEO, Simon Cureton, calls Asto “one of a new breed of ambitious and innovative lenders laser-focused on providing truly flexible finance solutions for businesses”.

Key takeaway:

Partnering with e-commerce giants would give lending company a better access to financial strength of the sellers on these platforms.

The above fintech venture broke into lending last year when it partnered with eBay to off loans to the 200,000 UK SMEs which sell their products through the ecommerce giant’s platform.

The app connects to eBay’s data to measure sales and cash flow to identify prospective customers and shape its credit decisioning process.

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Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options - FinTech Futures

Asto, Santander's fintech app, has partnered with alternative UK lender Funding Options to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and SMEs.

UK challenger Picnic Bank to address 'fintech for good' - FinTech Futures

Picnic Bank, a UK start-up focused on ‘fintech for good’, is set to launch its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) lending platform in September, before rolling out its fully licensed banking service sometime next year.

Whilst Picnic Bank lends to SMEs, earning interest on the loans, and taking referral fees from partners, it intends to build its bank in the background. But upon launch in September, it will be offering payment cards alongside its lending service until the full bank comes into play.

Once the bank is built, the start-up will look to offer three account tiers. The first will be a gamified, ‘eco-concierge’ to inspire users to live greener lifestyles. The second will be a ‘fintech for good’ toolbox, with features such as overdraft alerts – West points out that UK consumers needlessly waste £2 billion a year on overdraft fees. The third account in Picnic Bank’s suite will be focused around debt rebuilding, specifically to help those loaded with student loan debt, or debt due to losing a job.

The toolbox will also offer a guarantor to bring account holders back into the clear if they go into a negative balance. As well as Picnic Bank’s own features, the toolbox will offer services from a series of partners such as Better.com, a fintech eliminating fees from the UK mortgage process, Omnipresent, a German fintech which builds impact funds, Pynk, a social investment platform, and Fundsurfer, a crowdfunding and investment platform.

A number of other fintechs are either starting up, or are adapting their offering to the ‘fintech for good’ space. UK challenger Kestrl is set to launch later this year with an ethical banking offering which would track carbon emissions through open banking and allow users to donate through an integrated charity donation platform.

Netherlands-based challenger bank bunq, which has been around since 2015, revamped its banking app at the beginning of this month to allow users to donate to charities in the app and create their own local charities which they can invite other members to.

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UK challenger Picnic Bank to address 'fintech for good' - FinTech Futures

Picnic Bank, a UK start-up focused on 'fintech for good', is set to launch its SME lending platform in September, before its fully licensed banking service.

Turning Point: Two founders turned bankruptcy into growth with their startup venture Likvido

#liquidity #SME #smallbusiness #latepayments #fintech #fintechstartups #covid19 #startupfunding #SaaS

Nearly one in five (18%) of Europe’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) say that late payments threaten the survival of their business, according to Intrum’s 2019 European Payment Report.

Likvido.com, co-founded in March 2018 by Maximilian Frimmer and Lars Holdgaard, offers #SMEs an inverse management system which “connects the dots” between their accounting systems, Frimmer tells FinTech Futures. The start-up recently secured a €2.5 million seed investment from Paris-based investor, BlackFin.

The fintech automates actions for chasing late payments, like a SalesLoft campaign, but for late payments rather than new client engagement. It runs a proactive credit check on new clients to inform them of the number of days required for a campaign and the credit amount. This happens before building a workflow with emails, calls and texts which can also include ‘to do’ lists for account managers to charge late payment fees. If all this does not work, then Likvido.com will loop in a debt collection agency with just “one click”.

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Two founders turned bankruptcy into growth - FinTech Futures

In 2017, two Danish founders were facing bankruptcy. Instead of giving up, they turned exactly what had crippled them into a growing business - late payments.