Click Moment | ‘We chose to be a full-fledged lending entity: Asish Mohapatra, Co-founder and CEO, OfBusiness

At OfBusiness, we started in 2016 with the vision to create a technology-led small and medium enterprise (SME) network. A network where small and medium enterprises transact regularly for their single largest need i.e. availing working capital for buying raw materials, which are the single largest items on their balance sheet and profit and loss statements.

Initially, to keep ourselves capital-light, we started out as a raw material fulfilment platform that had credit as a service on a marketplace, where third party banks and non-banks provide credit. While the initial going was good, we realized soon enough that we were creating the network in an inefficient way. The customer’s need was clearly financing first and he was treating us as a value-added financier. On the supply side, third-party financiers were not moving at a pace that a nimble startup needs, thus not creating a great user experience i.e. service. Six months into our journey, we decided to grab the bull by the horns. We chose to become a full-fledged lending entity (no co-lending, no market place). And fulfilment had to be a service. Thus, we called ourselves Lender++.

And it has been exhilarating! We still stayed capital-efficient by being largely funded by debt. At our stage and scale, we would have the most diversified lender base across 35 institutional lenders. We have now added more services like, search for marketing opportunities (BidAssist) that create a significant pull for small and medium enterprises in the network. This made us grow rapidly and become profitable in no time, while we created a differentiated and high-engagement model. We have moved on from being a fulfilment provider that was struggling to solve for credit (a problem that all fulfillers face as the small and medium enterprise world is credit-ridden) to being Lender++, where we solve the core problem of lending while layering services that are both needed by the customer and creates a favourable outcome for us.

Source: https://www.livemint.com/companies/people/-we-chose-to-be-a-full-fledged-lending-entity-asish-mohapatra-co-founder-and-ceo-ofbusiness-11574276564917.html