Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) too want to cash in on the festival month, where India spends on clothes, food, and various consumer products. But for these SMBs, stocking up to meet the increased demand requires working capital. However, given the effects of economic slowdown reaching even small businesses, finding the funds to stock up is a challenge. This is where MSME loans come in. According to a report by Transunion CIBIL and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), aggregate MSME and SME lending, for both entities and individuals, has grown at 19.3 percent in the last few years. With the current banking ecosystem suffering from a lack of capital and struggling with NPA issues, the NBFC sector has been holding the fort and growing strongly in the last 2-3 years. MSME and SME loans are an efficient way to provide financial support the small businesses so that they can order more inventory, especially during festival seasons. Here are five financing platforms helping small businesses to stock up easily this festive season: NeoGrowth NeoGrowth is a pioneer in lending based on the underwriting of digital payments data. The company’s proprietary technology platform offers unsecured loans to merchants who accept card or other digital payments from customers. NeoGrowth offers customer’s small daily auto-repayment facility from card-based sales. The company states that its mission is to have a positive social impact on the financial lives of small and medium business merchants across India, more than 50 percent of whom are creditworthy but until now have been excluded from accessing loans based on traditional underwriting methods. Following its alliance with Paisabazaar.com last year, the platform increased its point-of-sale (PoS) based loan business by 100 percent during Oct-Dec 2018 over the previous quarter. NeoGrowth has partnered with over 13,000 business merchants from the MSME industry. ZipLoan The platform offers SME loans in the range of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh at the best interest rates in the market, ZipLoan states. Its business loans for SMEs are designed to meet the needs of small business owners and the company disburses the funds within a few working days. RupeeCircle RupeeCircle is a new-age peer-to-peer lending platform that gives business loans to small business owners and enterprises at attractive interest rates. It provides low-interest business loans and follows a collateral-free approach. Indifi Technologies Gurgaon-based leading platform, Indifi Technologies enables debt-financing for small businesses. It claims to design and deliver credit products based on the kind of business the SMB does. The platform helps to create an industry-specific credit delivery system in a cost-effective and scalable manner using innovative technology with an increasing focus on Tier II and Tier III cities as well. The company states that it strives to improve access to credit, speed of approval and disbursement, in order to provide relevant collateral-free loans and loan products. epayLater ePayLater is an online platform that provides working capital finance to SMEs in India with flexible, short-term loans that can be used to purchase inventory, service new orders, or optimise cash cycles. Its mission, it states, lies in bridging the current gap in the market with innovative and flexible credit products for SMEs, delivered in an efficient and customer-friendly manner.
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