Eko, India’s pioneer platform to enable sellers, has forayed into the lending ecosystem by creating the ‘first time credit’ module for ambitious sellers. What started as a journey to revolutionize money transfer in India has swiftly progressed to empowering millions of micro & small-sized businesses across the country, bolstering their digital footprint for a brighter tomorrow.
By dispensing close to $1bn of loans with flexible repayments infrastructure, the company wants to provide affordable capital and AI-backed services to MSMEs, allowing them to instill digital transformation within their operations. Eko wants to add products that build a line of credit with a daily drawdown and daily repayments. The company envisions to boost the overall operations of small & medium businesses, increase the flow of credit and fulfil the idea within the lending business.
The fintech platform uses the ‘micro-credit approach’ in its services and designs them to fulfill the same. Its daily repayment infrastructure capability allows sellers to repay loans daily in part or full. They can use this credit to boost their business and serve more customers using Eko’s platform or outside of it. Their proprietary underwriting model based on transactions done on Eko’s platform, another notable feature, offers credit to sellers who lack a CIBIL score and are not a part of the formal credit system. The model also uses demographic, and engagement data of the sellers to drive efficient results.
Speaking on the noble announcement, Mr Abhishek Sinha, Co-Founder, Eko, said, “A World Bank study estimates a $380bn financing gap for small & medium businesses in India. Given their role in the country’s development, something needs to be done to empower MSMEs to achieve their true potential. By leveraging top-notch technology and a sturdy infrastructure, we aim to become a one-stop platform for small-businesses that welcomes them into the world of credit, allowing them to drive their operations digitally and bolster their balance sheets”.
Eko’s mission to unlock growth in the partner ecosystem for MSMEs and take them at the helm of digital operations has attracted a lot of attention in the past. Owing to automated processes and deep-tech analytics driving its risk underwriting models, the platform is currently seeing over 50K sellers sign-ups each month, eyeing a target of 1 million sellers and a loan book of US$1Bn in the next 3-5 years.
