KredX, an online platform which lets credit-worthy medium and small enterprises borrow working capital from lenders against their unpaid invoices, has secured a $750K angel round from Prime Venture Partners. The startup is looking to organise India’s highly scattered, working capital lending system.
The platform works in a way, similar to how offline lending via financial institutions works for MSMEs, albeit in a more organised manner. Through KredX, SMEs looking to gain access to working capital from willing financial lenders can get the same against unpaid invoices. Customers in the B2B segment offer delay payments by upto 2 months, which leaves the service providing SME cash-strapped, hence requiring additional working capital to run the business.
With KredX, these SMEs can simply get connected to retail financiers who are looking for opportunities to invest in financial instruments that can provide them better returns in a short term period.
When a business enters into an invoice discounting arrangement, the finance company will allow the business to draw down a percentage of the outstanding sales. The financing party, in turn, will charge a monthly fee for the service, and interest on the amount borrowed against sales invoices.
Talking about the recent fundraise, KredX co-founder Manish Kumar says,
There are 36 million SMEs in India. Many of these often struggle to keep their cash flow intact and can hardly withstand the burden of late payments. They are in dire need for working capital. With our technology platform, we are helping them get access to working capital.
The platform has already clocked some decent numbers. KredX has already seen over 1000 transactions on its platform, with transaction amounts ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1 crore. There is however no data on how many SMEs and financiers have joined the platform.
Talking about utilising this fundraise, Kumar added,
We will use the funds to expand our team as well as strengthen our analytics and technology platform.
The company is also targeting to drastically advance its technology back-end, and is looking to hire experts in Data Science, AI and Machine Learning that will play a key role in scaling the business.
