Aye Finance, a new age non-banking finance company, has forayed into supply chain financing, according to its Managing Director and CEO Sanjay Sharma.
This Capital G (Google parent Alphabet’s investment arm)-backed financial technology (fintech) company, which started its journey in 2014, hopes to generate 10 per cent of its overall business from supply chain financing and digital invoicing initiatives in the next two years.
“This is a natural segment for us. We are not doing this to take advantage of economic slowdown. The future is probably going to be in supply chain financing. If we are going to be a cashless economy, then it is supply chain financing (through invoice discounting or purchase bill discounting) that will survive,” Sharma told
He also said that Aye Finance has started work on developing an app focussed on supply chain financing.
Pan India player
Aye Finance, which has so far been focussed on North and South India, has this fiscal expanded into the West and East.
“We want to be a pan India player,” Sharma said, adding that the aspiration is to have an almost evenly distributed business mix across the four regions.
The NBFC has been on a branch expansion spree, opening as many as 67 in the first six months of this fiscal.
Sixteen branches have come up in the West, mostly in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
“We believe West will be a big business opportunity for us and in the next three years the branch level could touch 50,” he said.
Fund-raising plans
For the fiscal year 2018-19, Aye Finance achieved loan disbursements of about ₹974 crore.
In the current fiscal, this is expected to go up to ₹1,200 crore, Sharma said.
Aye Finance, which raised Series D capital in April, is not looking to raise any equity for the next 18 months.
It will, however, go for periodic debt raise to fund business growth, he said.
Asked about the economic slowdown and whether it was impacting business, Sharma replied in the negative.
“We don’t see the slowdown impact hurting our customers who are basically micro units,” he said.
Sharma expressed confidence that the slowdown in the economy will bottom out in the next 3-4 months.