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Techiexpert Team has bough one more exclusive interview with the co-founders & directors of Namaste Credit Gaurav, Anand & Lucas Bianchi
What Problem Namaste Credit solves for us?
Namaste Credit is India’s leading AI-based credit discovery platform for MSMEs. The startup’s AI-based product is helping leading banks and NBFCs to automate credit assessment and make credit decision more intelligent, faster and seamless.
We also recently started our Neobank offering, with a foundational SaaS play. As a Neobank, Namaste Credit aims to become the first Neobank to offer a one-stop financial services provider for MSMEs, offering automated credit, banking and accounting solutions.
The motivation behind the idea?
The entrepreneurial itch was bothering both Lucas and me, while we were still at the Moody’s in the US. We understood finance well and our thoughts aligned as we both wanted to solve a big problem facing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the world – which was to ease their struggle in seeking credit. That is how we conceptualised Namaste Credit.
We identified two massive gaps in SME lending space. The first and most obvious gap is the lack of deep understanding of credit among intermediaries and the borrowers. The second issue identified was the lack of technology usage in the entire process. We believe that we have built the right solution for a significant problem and are glad to see the meaningful impact it is creating on the whole ecosystem.
About Namaste Credit.
Namaste Credit is leveraging AI and NLP in SME credit application sourcing and processing, through its SaaS solution, which is built to solve real-world problems of SME credit.
Namaste Credit has three business verticals catering to SMEs and lenders as explained below:
Namaste Credit Marketplace: Namaste Credit marketplace is a loan marketplace for small businesses, channel-partners and institutional lenders. The digital marketplace makes it easier for SMEs to receive loans through formal banking channels. It also helps banks to accept digitized and clean loan applications to facilitate faster credit assessment. The marketplace uses AI and Machine Learning that match an SME’s requirements with that of suitable banks’lenders which are most likely to meet their credit requirement.
iCAM© SAAS: Namaste Credit’s proprietary technology, iCAM is an AI-led loan processing platform. The startup licenses iCAM, its credit assessment automation platform to banks, on a software-as-a-solution model, which helps them process loans faster. A first-of-its-kind platform, iCAM uses OCR, AI and ML technologies to analyze 100x more data points than the traditional underwriting process. Some of the largest financial institutions in India are already using Namaste Credit’s iCAM.
Namaste Biz app: Neobanking arm of Namaste Credit, Namaste Biz is a unified banking and loan app for small businesses. The app features:
- MSME Loans from 70+ lenders
- Pre-approved loans
- Current account linking and operation
- Tagging and Download of Bank statements
- Free multi-mode collection/payment options like NEFT/RTGS or/and UPI
- Free GST Invoicing with seamless sharing through Email, SMS or WhatsApp
- Digital Ledger
About patents
We have filed three patents as of now. Our patented AI-based SaaS products allow Namaste Credit to process scanned financial documents into a credit assessment report, which enables lenders to significantly speed up their assessment processes and make better and faster decisions. This technology not only drastically reduces the time taken to sanction decisions but also gives a single, organized window of engagement to the lender and the channel partner on our platform itself. This translates into real-time updates on the status of loan applications for channel partners, lenders and Namaste Credit. Our technology brings 90% efficiency in the SME loan seeking process both for businesses and lenders.
USP of Namaste Credit
Namaste Credit’s core USP is getting higher approval rates for MSMEs using our technology. Its AI-powered enables matchmaking of SMEs with most suitable lenders facilitating highest loan approval rates.
Our proprietary technology enables automated credit underwriting to analyze 100x more data points than the underwriting process zero manual errors and comprehensive fraud detection.
We also help micro-enterprises seek a pre-approved loan through our Neo-banking services.
Funding Details
We have raised $3.8 Million USD in Series A from Nexus Venture Partners in 2018.
Expansion plans
We have an extensive product roadmap that we plan to execute over the next few months, which includes adding several new banks to our platform and enabling more SME-specific features. The behavioural insights will massively influence our offerings for MSME as they are developed through insights garnered from our ever-increasing user base. Hence, expanding deeper in the country will be our primary focus.
We are also aiming for global expansion in a year.