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In an exclusive interaction with BW Businessworld, Vipul Sharma, Founder and CEO, Chqbook discusses how 60 million small business owners can strengthen their business models using innovative financial solutions.
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Excerpts:
Q. What is the current state of the fintech sector?
Fintech is one of the fastest emerging areas in banking and financial services that is making the experience more intuitive, personalised and empowering. Armed with new data and analytics capabilities, asset-light platforms, and almost zero processing costs, fintechs are challenging traditional banking and financial services institutions globally. With the convergence of financial services and innovative technologies, India can work towards building a strong digital economy that will lead to major transformation.
Q. What makes Chqbook unique?
A. Chqbook is India’s first neo-bank for small business owners like kiranas, merchants, chemists, and others who are running proprietorship businesses. We offer small business owners a full-stack financial platform across the five pillars of lending, current account, khata, group insurance and rewards to help them grow, thrive and succeed.
Our intent is to simplify the lives of this community and provide them with a diverse range of products, catering to their specific requirements. Chqbook’s mobile app places the power of managing day-to-day financial requirements in their hands, helping them save their valuable time, money and effort. We are a multi-product platform unlike other financial applications that offer only a single product service, for example, just loans or insurance.
Small business owners have to maintain and manage all their financial transactions across platforms which we have tried to simplify by creating a financial control centre for all their needs. Since we are multiproduct, we can assess their needs depending on where they are in their financial lifecycle and are able to recommend the right product at the right time.
Q. What inspired you to start your enterprise?
A.Small businesses are the backbone of a thriving economy and play a key role in the growth and development of any country. With over 60 million small business owners in the country, there is a huge potential to add value to this underserved segment by strengthening their business models through innovative financial solutions that leverage technology.
Q. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A. Chqbook is unit economics-positive, and our YOY revenue witnessed 10X growth in FY’ 19-20 compared to FY’18-19. Today, we serve over 8,00,000 customers and process applications from customers across 500 Indian cities. We plan to scale to over 50 cities and are on track to increase our customer base by one million during this financial year by bringing choice, convenience, ease, speed and access to a range of financial products.