Funding Small Businesses
Biz2Credit was founded in 2007 to make business finance work better. It is backed by Nexus Venture Partners and its 225,000 small business customers. Biz2Credit has provided over US$ 7 billion in small business loans and financing for thousands of companies across the US. Biz2Credit operates an online marketplace that matches business owners with the right lender and loan type for their needs. Biz2Credit serves all 50 states in the US and a few international locations including the United Kingdom, Australia and India.
Fintechs in India have nurtured a niche customer segment with rapid growth over the last decade. With emerging digital lending companies in India, the country witnessed a CAGR of 39.5 per cent over a span of 10 years. India's digital lending market was worth US$ 270 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach US$ 350 billion by 2023, according to a report by Experian.
The Journey
Rohit Arora, Co-founder and CEO of Biz2Credit, launched Biz2X in 2019. Biz2X is a platform to help banks run their lending operations at scale in the Indian market. Arora felt the need for a platform like Biz2X as banks and fintech players lending to MSMEs suffered from costly SME originations, leading to expensive and poor-quality customer acquisition.
Fuelling the government’s mission of Aatmanirbhar Bharat, Biz2 has launched ‘Maadhyam’, an integrated cross-channel ecosystem middleware that brings more than just automation and analytics to the lender-borrower equation. Speaking about credit shortage, Arora further highlighted that they are aiming to invest $25 million over the next three years to grow Maadhyam and make India the fintech capital of the world.
Bolstering India
Unsecured, small-ticket-size loans will drive India’s credit market through 2030, says a report by Experian India. Earlier it used to be branch-led but now the mainstream banks will have to become digital-first and markets are moving quickly in that direction. With the government’s intervention in terms of account aggregation, the adoption of digital channels is rising.
According to Arora, the SMBs find the process much easier, faster and cheaper as the data is more accessible for neo-banks to underwrite and monitor.
Future Plans
To address the untapped masses, digital intervention and the ability to collect more data in a seamless manner are helping Biz2Credit hugely to lower the reliance on third-party data.
In a bid to expand its footprint in the Indian market, Biz2Credit has announced plans to ramp up its workforce by hiring 200 people for its Digital Lending SaaS platform, Biz2X in the next few months of 2023.
Arora plans to consolidate its presence in the US, India’s newer segments and within UAE, including Saudi. In the next phase of growth, he plans to expand into Southeast Asia as well. Arora stated, “Our revenue has doubled since the last quarter. The macroeconomic factors and the ongoing funding winter have also resulted in the shakeout of competition.”
