Venture debt companies, NBFCs eye spot in supply chain finance

Bengaluru: Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and venture debt firms are getting into the business of supply chain finance (SCF).

The move comes amid a liquidity squeeze following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to hike interest rates, even as startups are seeing better customer stickiness.

“We are building a solution that will address the supply chain finance issues for startups,” said Ishpreet Singh Gandhi, founder and managing partner of venture debt firm Stride Ventures. “We are setting up a separate business which is not part of Stride Ventures.”

Supply chain finance is a lending solution provided to suppliers and other channel partners of a startup to optimize cashflows.

Stride, which has backed the likes of The Good Glamm Group and Pocket Aces, has seen startups from the ecommerce and automotive segments in its portfolio evince interest in the supply chain finance segment.

On Tuesday, Gandhi announced the starting of a new NBFC
StrideOne – which offers customised credit to startups and their suppliers. The NBFC has raised Rs 250 crore to develop the product.

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StrideOne, which was launched six months ago, has assets under management (AUM) of Rs 200 crore across more than 20 anchor companies.

“The demand for supply chain finance is growing, we have already onboarded 1,000 borrowers on the platform, and it will easily go up 5-10 times in the next three-four quarters,” Gandhi said.

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