Opening Up The Way For SMEs And Startups

From collecting payments to book-keeping, SMEs and startups in India face several challenges when it comes to managing their business finances. Open, a neo-banking platform for SMEs and startups, is trying to make this easier for them and it is currently serving more than 100,000 SMEs and processing around $5 billion in transactions annually. In a conversation with OutlookMoney, Anish Achuthan, Cofounder and CEO, Open, explains the challenges faced by them and how his venture is helping such enterprises. 

What are the challenges faced by SMEs and startups when it comes to managing their business finances?

SMEs face a lot of difficulty in tracking and forecasting cash-flows, effectively managing account receivables and payables. They need to deal with multiple interfaces for accounting, payment gateway and payroll and there is a lack of online tools that help them plan their day-to-day activities.

Where are banks lacking to serve SMEs and startups effectively? Why?

Banks depend on legacy infrastructure and have multiple products which work in silos. Banks are not able to unify the SME financial automation process, making them spend a lot of time in reconciling and managing finances.

How can SMEs overcome this challenge? 

Technology players can build platforms to integrate banking with different financial tools that can actually help businesses automate their business finances helping them save time and focus more on their business.

How is Open helping SMEs?

In Open, for the first time all these services are bundled together in one single platform. SMEs on our platform do not need to use multiple service providers. The platform comes pre-integrated with tools to collect payments, do payouts, connect bank accounts, and reconcile payments with automated accounting. 

How do you see things changing in future?  

I see more collaboration between banks and fintechs to build innovative platforms to help businesses grow and run their businesses efficiently.

On a final note it can be said that, SME and startups, especially within the finance sector have a bright future going ahead, and especially with the efforts of neo-banking platforms like Open.