Washington, DC, October 27, 2021: Cashinvoice, one of India’s fastest-growing supply chain financing (SCF) platform, announced today that it has raised Pre-Series A funding of $1 million from Accion Venture Lab. The company provides customized supply chain financing (SCF) solutions to the buyers and suppliers of mid and large corporates through its digital marketplace for invoice discounting. The platform integrates with corporates to access validated invoices, dynamically price discounts on the invoices based on its risk assessment algorithms and enables lenders on the platform to digitally process loans against invoices. Since launch in September 2019, the company has disbursed over 10 lakh invoices amounting to over INR 4,000 crores and has over 3,500 MSMEs on the platform. The pre-series A funding by Accion Venture Lab comes at a strategic period as the platform gears up to facilitate over INR 10,000 crores worth of financing for MSMEs in the year ahead.
Arun Poojari, co-founder and CEO of Cashinvoice, said: “We are thrilled to be associated with Accion Venture Lab. Accion is well respected across the globe for its impact investing led practices and objectives. This new funding round will help us develop our key services of early payments to suppliers, purchase order financing, buyer financing and retailer financing. We are glad to be a part of this revolutionary moment where new age fintechs like ours are redefining the rules of lending by using alternate transactional data to efficiently originate, assess and monitor borrowers, thus bridging the trust deficit between SMEs and lenders.”
“Millions of MSMEs across India are struggling to recover from the effects of the pandemic, and they need customized financing options in order to adapt and build resilience,” said Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. “By applying innovative new credit-assessment strategies to expand access to financing for MSMEs, Cashinvoice is creating an inclusive financial system and ensuring that microentrepreneurs can continue serving their communities.”
Amee Parbhoo, Managing Director of Accion Venture Lab, said, “We see great potential in Cashinvoice, as they are a unified platform for all SCF needs, backed with cutting-edge advanced technology. Unlocking working capital within supply chains is the need of the hour, as it not only helps with effective cash flow management in corporates, but also caters to the large number of underserved micro-enterprises who need formal sources of lending.”
Cashinvoice’s model incentivizes buyers by giving them discounts to pay their suppliers early thereby unlocking capital which is trapped in the form of credit period within supply chains. Thus, the model creates a win-win scenario by addressing the working capital needs of MSME suppliers and reducing procurement cost for buyers. The company aims to bridge the USD 400 billion credit gap within the MSME segment through cost effective and hassle-free access to supply chain financing.
Shrinivas Kasar, co-founder and COO of Cashinvoice, said, “Despite India’s GDP being majorly dependent on the health of the MSME ecosystem, the current gap in financial inclusivity for micro-organizations. Technology has always been the core at Cashinvoice, where we have developed AI tools to analyze trade ledger data along with alternate data points in order to evaluate a borrower’s credit worthiness, even if they lack a formal credit history.”
About Cashinvoice
Cashinvoice is a digital supply chain finance marketplace that offers dynamic invoice discounting to some of India’s leading corporates. The supply chain financing platform enables comprehensive payable and receivable management solutions that digitize the way businesses pay and get paid. Launched in 2018, Cashinvoice optimises working cash flows efficiently through digitalisation of invoices and leveraging supply chain finance to incentivize payables and receivables. For more information, visit https://cashinvoice.in/
About Accion Venture Lab
Accion’s seed-stage investment initiative Accion Venture Lab provides capital and extensive support to innovative fintech startups that improve the reach, quality, and affordability of financial services for the underserved and have the potential to scale. Backed by commercial and impact investors since the launch of its third-party fund in 2019, Accion Venture Lab has invested in more than 55 early-stage startups that operate in 30 countries worldwide. Accion Venture Lab is a part of Accion, a global nonprofit committed to creating a financially inclusive world, with a pioneering legacy in microfinance and fintech impact investing. Accion catalyzes financial service providers to deliver high-quality, affordable solutions at scale for the three billion people who are left out of – or poorly served by – the financial sector. For 60 years, Accion has helped tens of millions of people through our work with more than 170 partners in 55 countries. For further information, visit https://www.accion.org/venturelab.
