[BW Disrupt] Credflow Raises $2.1 Million In Seed Funding Led

Originally posted on BW Disrupt

Indian SMEs, particularly traditional manufacturing and distribution businesses in the B2B supply chain are still using archaic, offline processes to manage their receivables and payables.

Credflow, a FinTech startup offering cash flow management solutions for Indian SMEs has raised $2.1 Million (Rs 15.2 crore) in seed funding led by Stellaris Venture Partners, Omidyar Network India and Flourish Ventures. CredFlow will be investing in platform development, strengthening tech capabilities and building new products as it focuses on expanding its customer base. The SME cash flow management startup is also looking to expand its team across tech, product and marketing.

Credflow is a cashflow management SaaS platform that helps SMEs manage their finances by providing a dashboard of pending amounts by customer, sending timely payment reminders, validating invoices and negotiating discounts for early payment, thus enabling these businesses to reduce their working capital cycles by 25-30%. Since its launch in May 2020, over 5000 businesses have used Credflow to process and sync invoices worth more than Rs. 70,000 crore (~$10billion). CredFlow’s vision is to build a full stack solution including cashflow based financing, treasury management and payments management to help SMEs optimise their cashflows and accelerate their growth.

“Delayed collections is a major challenge that Indian SMEs face and capital stuck in receivables is a leading cause for financial stress. Indian SMEs, particularly traditional manufacturing and distribution businesses in the B2B supply chain are still using archaic, offline processes to manage their receivables and payables. Much of fintech innovation in the past decade has been focused either on large enterprises or retailers and micro-enterprises, while the mid-market B2B segment remains largely unaddressed. We’re excited to partner with Omidyar Network India, Stellaris Venture Partners and Flourish Ventures in helping us leverage technology to realise this mission of making Indian SMEs truly Aatmanirbhar” Kunal Aggarwal - Founder, Credflow.

"For the past two decades, average debtor days for Indian SMEs has consistently exceeded 90 days. While the sector has begun digitising and formalising rapidly, cashflow management remains a chronic pain point. We believe that CredFlow’s focused solutions will significantly improve the financial health of SMEs and accelerate their growth by empowering SME business owners with cutting-edge digital tools and analytics to manage cashflows efficiently. Kunal and his team are passionate about solving for the critical needs of SME business owners, who are the largest employers of the Next Half Billion. We are delighted to partner them in this journey.” Treasa Mathew, Director, Omidyar Network India.

“As a part of a small business family himself, Kunal has a simple mission in life: help small businesses get paid fast. This clarity of thought resonated well with our own investment thesis at Stellaris, which focuses on solving highly monetizable business problems for SMBs.

Credflow’s payment dashboard commands the attention of the business owner and becomes the primary daily MIS for the business. In the long run, this will help Credflow become the financial operating system for SMBs, providing a view on their overall financial health and helping them access a diverse set of own and third party financial products.” Ritesh Banglani, Partner, Stellaris Venture Partners

“Credflow is a compelling story because it solves a real financial problem for a large and underserved segment with a simple and affordable tool. With its focus on MSMEs and its convenient mobile tool, the company that Kunal and his team have built already stands out from its competitors. In the future, the platform has the potential to embed a range of relevant financial services – including cashflow financing – in a convenient and affordable way so as to benefit its customers’ lives. We’re excited to be involved with CredFlow and to be backing another Indian entrepreneur whose innovation is helping to advance financial health and prosperity for individuals and small businesses.” Anuradha Ramachandran, Investments Director, Flourish Ventures

Marquee angel investors like Nitin Gupta (Founder of Uni.money) also participated in the round.