Analytics & AI will Better Align Capital and Risk in a Capitalist Economy: Namaste Credit

In this exclusive interview with Lucas Bianchi, Co-Founder and Director of Namaste Credit, Amit Singh delves into the rapidly evolving landscape of B2B Fintech in India. Lucas provides valuable insights into the transformations that B2B Fintech solutions have brought to traditional enterprise finance practices, highlighting key trends, the current state of investment, and the unique value proposition of Namaste Credit in the SME lending market. Additionally, he shares his vision for the future of B2B Fintech in India over the next 3 to 5 years, emphasizing the pivotal role of data and AI in shaping the industry.

Amit Singh: How have B2B Fintech solutions transformed traditional enterprise finance practices?

Lucas Bianchi: The B2B Fintech landscape in India has transformed drastically over the past few years, especially in the payments area with the dramatic rise of digital payments across multiple government-sponsored platforms which have been supported by banks and large technology companies.  The ability to easily make payments instantly and in bulk has transformed the way that many SMEs and other enterprises pay and get paid. There have also been meaningful changes in the technology infrastructure around SME lending, although we’re still in the early part of the S-Curve in this area.

Amit: What trends have you observed regarding B2B Fintech adoption by businesses in recent years?

Lucas: B2B Fintech is having a meaningful impact across all sectors led by the increased ease and speed of making payments of all sizes. Within the lending landscape, the adoption of B2B Fintech by lenders has started to reduce turn-around times in a number of borrower segments and products. It is also starting to provide lenders with a better understanding of their customers through deeper analytics, but the penetration of solutions in this area is still minimal and resulting benefits are yet to have a meaningful impact across the sector.

Amit: Can you provide an overview of the current landscape of SME lending? Please give us a glimpse of the value addition that your organization brings to the SME lending market.

Lucas: The SME lending landscape is very fragmented with hundreds of banks and NBFCs providing capital to various segments and in a range of structures. As a full-stack platform, Namaste Credit provides customers with high-value solutions that improve their lives in multiple ways. Through the Loan Hub, Namaste Credit simplifies this complex market ensuring that there is a rapid and optimized match between borrower and lender. With our SAAS offering, Namaste Credit licenses lenders the market’s most advanced technology, enabling them to onboard their customers more rapidly, at a lower cost, and with a better understanding of their risk profiles.

Amit: How do business loan platforms simplify and expedite the process of accessing capital for SMBs/enterprises, particularly in comparison to traditional lending institutions?

Lucas: The lines between independent business loan platforms and traditional lending institutions are not as clear as they used to be given the increasing use of B2B Fintech solutions by BFSI incumbents like banks and large NBFCs. Some of the first independent platforms ran into challenges with their focus on growth rather than robust credit models, which has led to a pullback in this segment. Meanwhile, many of the established lenders have increasingly adopted solutions that speed up their TAT and improve customer onboarding experiences. TATs for many loans have already been reduced from weeks to days and in some cases minutes. Clients that have utilized Namaste Credit’s Loan Hub have the benefit of lower TATs as well as more immediate access to loan products that better fit their needs, no matter who the ultimate capital provider is.

Amit: Could you outline some specific cost-saving benefits that enterprises and BFSI organizations derive from tying up with your platform?

Lucas: Large banks and NBFCs that license our platform have been able to reduce costs of onboarding and underwriting by 60-80%. While we cannot discuss the specifics of individual clients, one of the top-10 global banks has improved its operating efficiency of underwriting SME borrowers by over 60% over the past couple of years. Another top-10 NBFC has been able to enter multiple new product segments with Namaste Credit’s onboarding platform, spending just 25% of what they would have needed otherwise. With regards to SME borrowers, there are countless examples of clients getting loans without processing fees and at better ROIs than they would have been able to do on their own.

Amit: Can you provide examples of how your Fintech solutions have streamlined financial operations for enterprises and BFSI organizations?

Lucas: Namaste Credit’s solutions have streamlined the onboarding and underwriting operations of all of our BFSI clients. Specifically, our AI-driven platform has enabled these clients to ensure that they are:

• Getting the correct documents to start with (first-time-right)
• Immediately evaluating if the documents are legitimate or fraudulent
• Extracting all relevant data from applications and related documents
• Analyzing all information and providing actionable insights to the lender.

For lenders that have implemented Namaste Credit’s full-stack solution, they are able to onboard, underwrite, and sanction loans to any SMEs in a matter of minutes.

Amit: How do you envision the future of B2B Fintech in India in the next 3 to 5 years?
Lucas: The past several years have seen the rapid adoption of digital payments and related rise of digitized data related to these payments. The next several years will be driven by the increasing use of this data for better analytics and decision-making. This will be supported by the availability of exponentially more data and the increasing adoption of ever-improving AI-based technologies across multiple use cases. Ultimately, this will result in a much better alignment of capital and risk, a game-changing value driver in a capitalist economy.