At a time when India’s huge MSME sector is battling rising bad loans, Deskera, a cloud-based integrated software provider, says it can work as a “bridge” and offer solutions for quick loan approvals by helping banks tap into the real-time financial data of businesses linked to its system.
“Banks will not look at your face and give money. They need documentation and have to be comfortable with the structure of your business. That’s where we step in,” says Shashank Dixit, CEO, Deskera.
With the tagline “Run Your Business”, Deskera says its cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help banks verify documents, as the system keeps track of a connected SME’s financial transactions, such as invoices, inventory, balance sheet, etc, as also cash, raw material, production capacity, orders and payrolls.
“If this data is made available to banks, they will be in a better position to take informed decisions. On the basis of the data, they can predict when and how an enterprise will start losing traction, weeding out wilful defaulters,” says Dixit, an IIT Kanpur alumnus.
Deskera, he claims, has been helping 3,000 SMEs globally, mainly in South East Asia, and 20 per cent of its revenue comes from India.
In India, Deskera has its main office in Pune, and is now looking to expand in the Delhi-NCR region with focus on auto clusters, for which it has been in talks with some private sector banks.
“With cloud, there is no need for an SME to invest in hardware. Everything can be done on phones, like accessing multiple offices, checking inventory, orders etc,” he says.
The ERP system can also help an SME get a loan on the basis of invoice, a trend that has still not caught up in India.
“Unlike overseas, invoice factoring is still not big in India. Banks are wary of fraudulent invoices. Deskera can verify invoices to a large extent,” he says. “Say, an SME is a supplier to Honda and has a small order of ₹1 crore. It can pick up a loan on that basis. By using the ERP, an e-mail can be sent to Honda to verify the order and get back to the bank. Our system will also monitor user proceeds of the loan. It’s not like (Vijay) Mallya taking loans for planes and buying horses,” adds Dixit.
Asked about the charges, Dixit, without disclosing the amount, said both banks and SMEs are charged a fee, which is more like a subscription for five years.