Cxo of the week: Ankur Bhageria, Founder, CashFlo

CashFlo is a supply chain finance and payment automation platform. As a pioneer in this category, the Mumbai-based company has been helping businesses optimize their cash flows with its cutting edge technology. The platform helps buyers optimize their working capital and treasury returns, and automate their accounts payables processes, while it helps vendors get access to early payments.

CashFlo is trusted by 50+ corporates in India like Tata Group, Haldia Petrochemicals, Aditya Birla Group, Vedanta, Arvind Limited, among others. It has a network of over 3,00,000 Tier-1 and Tier-2 suppliers and dealers, which is growing exponentially.

Ankur Bhageria, Founder & CEO of CashFlo. Recently we have engaged in an interview with Ankur Bhageria. He talks about supply chain financing scenario in India and his journey so far and what CashFlo has been up to.

Read the full interview here:

Introduction.

About CashFlo: Launched in 2018, we at CashFlo are on a mission to catalyse India's GDP growth by fundamentally transforming how businesses pay and get paid. Our product suite helps businesses optimize their working capital & treasury; while automating their core finance processes. Our flagship offering on Dynamic Discounting and Vendor financing has grown 1000% over the past year, expanding its network to 50+ India’s largest corporates and a network of over 2L+ Tier 1 and Tier 2 level suppliers and distributors.

About the spokesperson: I am Ankur, Founder & CEO of CashFlo. I have over 15 years of experience in supply chain financing, digital strategy in financial services, new business build and large scale transformation. Was a Project Leader at BCG in Financial Services and an Investment Banker with JP Morgan prior to starting CashFlo.

What inspired us? We wanted to solve large and complex problems for the country and to me, solving for the access to credit ranked right up there, especially in context of India's own ambitions of turning into a 5 tn GDP economy. Given my background in financial services, I had a deep appreciation of the problem statement and what it would take to solve that problem, and the impact that it could create on our economy. Having seen small businesses in my own extended family struggle for access to credit, and their own ambitions of building large businesses, the problem truly hit home.

Tell us about your offerings.

We started with Dynamic discounting and Vendor financing as the first suite of products. This enables us to reach scale and provide immediate credit relief to MSMEs across the country. We have scaled this over the past 4 years and now have 50+ corporates and 2L+ suppliers in our network, with industry specific customisations. To explain briefly, dynamic vendor financing provides for capital against invoices to all vendors (including long tail) - when they need it, at the rate they want, and for the amount they need at that given point in time. Buyers, on the other hand, can extend credit to their vendors and earn arbitrage on their own treasury or bank working capital lines, and get extended credit periods to improve their own working capital position. Hence, dynamic vendor financing creates a win-win scenario for both buyers and suppliers.

Going deeper into the supply chain, we realised that the payments and collections processes are fundamentally broken - hence the foray into B2B payments automation suite of products. Payments automation is critical for both established and growth stage businesses. Critical things to solve are - compliance to government regulations, tight governance and control, and improved efficiency - all of which Payments automation helps to achieve. If we consider growing businesses, payment automation is not just hygiene but is critical. It enables better working capital management and optimizes days payables outstanding (DPO) thereby fueling growth. It also ensures better visibility and liquidity in the supply chain - ensuring the suppliers are growing with the growth of the buyer.

How has Covid-19 accelerated the transition to digital for the traditional financial industry? What will be the new normal in the industry?

Post-covid era has brought in disproportionate focus to digitization in the corporate world. Each sector is figuring out ways to digitize the processes, which can then enable remote working without lapses in governance and control. This is a global phenomenon. For example - Globally digital payment adoption has increased massively post Covid with almost over 2/3rds of CFOs vouching for its efficiency to steadfast things in the new normal. India is not far behind in following this trend. While we all are aware of the boom in B2C Fintech space, we are seeing the finance functions in B2B setup also open up to digitization in a big way.

Kindly shed some light on the supply chain financing scenario in India.

Supply chain finance in India is not new, but it has been built keeping in mind certain constraints which have not been questioned. When CashFlo came in, we spent a lot of time on-ground talking to businesses and understanding how invoice financing fits into their day to day business. The insights are clear - simplicity and flexibility is the need of the hour. What was needed was a process that systematically reduces default risk and gives instant decisioning. What we built is a tool that gives 100% flexibility and autonomy to each party, an instant decisioning platform and a one click process without compromising on risk mitigation. It is undeniable though that invoice based financing is going to be a key driver of capital credit to growing businesses in India and all the tailwinds point in that direction

How can small players overcome the challenges faced while adopting technology into their business?

Adopting technology in a company requires people to change their day to day habits of doing things the traditional way - this requires a strong champion, often the leadership, to endorse and support this change. Adoption will follow

What changes is CashFlo bringing to the industry?

We are building an innovative and technology-first suite of products to solve the problems for core payables and receivables functions of every company and re-imagine how businesses pay and get paid, with an aim to eliminate friction from B2B trade and turbocharge economic growth.

What, as per you, are the five important things that fintechs should be looking at today? 

 According to me, there are 4 things. At the end of the day, the customer is at the centre of all decisions that are made as a business and you want to be able to cater to this customer for the foreseeable future. For this, the important things to keep in mind are –

• Sustainable business - Businesses should be built keeping every stakeholder in mind, including regulators. It is the only way to survive
• Win-win for all - Imagine and build new ways while empowering the existing ecosystem, including existing banks and financial institutions
• Value creation - The customer should need / want your services, and that is only possible when you are changing their lives for the better
• Scalability - These business is such that you are able to find the PMF and then scale across the market with ease