India’s Leading BFSI & FinTech Companies 2024

[ BRANDED CONTENT ] We are entering a narrow lane in the city of Meerut to meet Intezaar who manufactures items out of metal sheets. It’s a hot humid afternoon so a workshop with a furnace is not the most ideal place to spend your afternoon. Intezaar Ahmed welcomes us outside his factory. A bit shy and also a little awkward, it’s evident that he does not often have visitors dropping in at his workshop. We enter the dilapidated workshop, half expecting to see some metal sheets being cut or something equally mundane. But we are dazzled by the surreal transformation of metal sheets into attractive figurines & knights armour through various stages of fabrication. It could have easily been the warehouse of the popular series Game of Thrones or the movie Avengers. We saw laid out in front of us shiny gauntlets, helmets, leg and arm guards and other variety of armours. Intezaar was unable to comprehend the excitement of his visitors. It was a humbling experience to see the maker of these magnificent products unaware of his brilliance. Intezaar’s father had started the business of manufacturing metal sheets and used to supply it to the factories but when he joined the business, he felt he could earn more if he moulded these sheets and created products out of them. But for that he needed to buy additional machines and create space to house those machines. And all that required capital. He did approach a few banks but he was turned away as he did not have a bank account, all his transactions were in cash, he had never maintained formal documents of his business and at best could offer some lose sheets of paper he had scribbled his accounts. Add to that he had never availed any loan so had no prior credit history. Still desperate to not let go of his dream of expansion, he approached a local trader who was ready to offer him the capital but the high rate of interest he was charging was daunting. Then he came across Aye Finance. There are over 60 million micro enterprises like Intezaar’s that despite playing a pivotal role in the Indian economy struggle to implement crucial initiatives like investing in essential equipment, recruiting additional staff, and adapting to market changes due to lack of funds. Founded in 2014 to transform micro enterprise lending in India, Aye has already brought over 8 lac businesses, including Intezaar’s, into the folds of formal economy having disbursed over INR 100 billion to the sector. Aye Finance, using a proprietary “Cluster Based Credit Assessment” methodology and optimally digitised processes effectively addresses roadblocks within traditional financial systems that impede microenterprises’ access to business loans while keeping a healthy portfolio and consistently delivering profits. The MSME lender has attracted marque investors to fund it in its mission to enable financial inclusion of micro enterprises – CapitalG, British International Investment, Elevation Capital, Lightrock, Alpha Wave, A91 Partners and MAJ Invest. Aye has leveraged a phygital model. While its processes and underwriting is digital, its reach to the unorganized business owners is through its 496 branches spread across 22 States of India. It is a successful innovator and has flourished in this difficult ecosystem. Aye is delivering outcomes that befit a double bottom line – on the one hand, establishing an eff¬icient, profitable and scalable business and on the other, bringing about a transformative social impact by addressing the disparity in economic privileges of this excluded sector. AYE FINANCE: A REVOLUTIONARY FINTECH PLAYER Dun & Bradstreet