MarketBills on one-hand helps suppliers raise finance against unpaid invoices and solve their working capital cash flow problems while on another hand offers high return low risk short-term investment opportunities to Investors. Suppliers have access to faster funds at competitive interest rates while investors earn significantly higher returns on their investments.
Anuj Modi, qualified Chartered Accountant along with his banker friend decided to start a new venture which aims to solve SMEs/MSMEs’ working capital & cash flow problem. When he was working with one of the leadning MNC in NCR region as Finance head, he observed lack of consistent cash flow a major issue among SMEs/MSMEs suppliers. These suppliers always requested him to make payment of invoices before due date. But he refused to do as Company Policy didn’t allow to do it. Further large corporates do not have any incentive to pay early.
On other hand, When he was running his own charetered accountancy pratice, he noticed that most of his friends & clients were on constant lookout alternate invesment opportunities. Either they weren’t happy with return from available invesments instruments or investments required high lock-in period.
He left his established CA practice to start his new venture MarketBills. This idea turned around many SMEs/MSMEs which were on the verge of closure working capital issues. MarketBills was launched earlier this year and went commercially live in April 2016.
“Currently transactions on our platforms are via invitation only and we will go to public very soon.” Said Anuj Modi, Co-founder.
Average duration of invoice financing varies from 30 to 90 days and serves needs of various types of vendor & investor groups. Credit Limits are assigned to Suppliers based on the MarketBills’ Proprietary Risk Model.
“Invoices registered on our plaftorm by suppliers are typically raised against blue chip companies. Generally suppliers need finace for 2 to 3 months to support their short term working capital. It is a short term product which reduces the risk of investment and increases liquidity. Supplier get their dues from client within 3 months and return it to investor.” Said Anuj Modi, co-founder, MarketBills.com.
MarketBills’ Online Platform is offering 15-24% p.a. return on investment to investors for short term investments which is one of the most lucrative part of their offering. On the other hands vendors are getting the funds in 24-48 hrs which is the biggest sticky point for vendors on MarketBills Platform.
While asked on Marketing Strategy, Anuj Said “till now, we have been fortunate to get sufficient traction by word of mouth publicity and we didn’t have to spend any money on Marketing. We are working on our Marketing Strategy to support public launch.”
The Challenges !!“Changing the Status Quo continues to be challenge as it takes significant amount of time to explain the concept of Invoice Financing and the merits of doing it in organized fashion to both investors and MSMEs. The best part of our journey so far is that once a customer is boarded, most of them have been repeat users of our platform. We are investing significant effort and energy in educating our users.” mentioned Anuj.
Funding !!MarketBills has remained bootstrapped till date and plans to remain bootstrapped in near future.
Anuj Said, “While VC do help companies grow faster, at times they create undue pressure to grow at 100% per month which I believe is unrealistic and leads to frustration and attrition among in start-ups. We plan to grow organically at the pace we want to so that we can balance product development, customer experience and revenue. During the soft launch MarketBills is charging only MSMEs however it plans to charge both investors and Vendors when the product is fully launched.
Our Opportunity is entire supply Chain and Market Opportunity is huge. While we see funding drying up from eCommerce, FoodTech and few other sectors, I see lot of open interest in FinTech industry especially our Model. Few VCs did approach us and we will go for VC funding when the timing is appropriate.”
“We have a long way to go and our Journey has just started” Anuj said as the concluding comment.
