The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted ftcash, a startup in SME lending, a license to set up a non-banking financial company (NBFC). The company hopes to provide loans totalling INR 100 crore in FY23.
Nearly 80% of all MSMEs in India lack access to funding, despite the government announcing many efforts to improve credit availability for the stressed MSMEs sector.
The lender is a part of India’s expanding fintech ecosystem and seeks to “empower over 60 million micro-merchants and small businesses.” This will be accomplished by filling the current lending gap with more readily available loans.
“The NBFC licence will allow us to bridge this credit gap while offering loans with minimal documentation along with daily repayment options via PoS with equated daily installments,” said Sanjeev Chandak, Cofounder & CEO, ftcash.
Sanjeev Chandak, Deepak Kothari, and Vaibhav Lodha founded ftcash in 2015; the company has its main office in Mumbai. The company is known for using algorithms to evaluate MSMEs’ creditworthiness and provide them with institutional financing.
“We have over 60,000 merchants in our network currently and have disbursed over INR 600 crore worth of loans till now. We expect the disbursals to grow 3X by 2023”, he added.
The company presently collaborates with Ambit, Urgo, and Northern Arc and helps them provide credit to their respective customer bases.
