Prepared by Aishwarya Ade
Oxyzo Financial Services Enters Coveted Unicorn Club At Series A Level
India’s Startup ecosystem saw a phenomenal growth in 2021 with Startups raising a total of $42 billion, up from $11.5 billion in the previous year. India saw 46 unicorns (companies with valuations of $1 Billion) in 2021 alone, now more than doubling to a total number of 90 unicorns in the first half of 2022. One such latest addition to India’s growing list of unicorns, is ‘Oxyzo Financial Services’, the lending arm of SoftBank-backed business-to-business (B2B) commerce startup ‘OfBusiness’.
The Gurugram based Startup made news of it’s $200 million Series A Fundraise which was led by Alpha Wave, and co-led by Tiger Global, Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Creation Investments. This is the largest Series-A Funding ever recorded for an Indian Startup, giving it the cult ‘Unicorn’ status and the distinction of being the first profitable fintech unicorn. Oxyzo is also making buzz for being one of the few startups to turn unicorn, under the leadership of a woman co-founder, Ruchi Kalra.
How it started?
‘OfBusiness’ was founded in 2016 by Asish Mohapatra, Vasant Sridhar, Ruchi Kalra, Bhuvan Gupta, and Nitin Jain with a focus on providing working capital lending solutions for SMEs to procure raw materials. This led to the birth of ‘Oxyzo’ in 2017, whose core concept was to provide ‘Smart Financing’ methods, by enabling cash flow matched working capital financing for SMEs in traditional sectors, such as manufacturing & sub-contracting to buy raw materials.
What is Smart Financing?
India has a larger concentration of SMEs, who continue to face hurdles when looking to obtain financing from traditional means to scale their business. Owing to the size of their enterprise, they are usually denied loans from banks and other lending services, thereby limiting their growth & their ability to build wealth.
Smart Financing comes as a relief to SMEs, primarily by providing working capital solutions as well as newly developed technology for accounting, calculating & providing specially designed capital to SMEs that advantageously suits their specific needs. This is delivered through an efficient mechanism that uses a combination of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and other such related programs, with an outcome of advanced accuracy and efficiency in supplying capital.
How does Smart Financing help SMEs?
By opting for Smart Financing, SMEs benefit with:
Oxyzo, through it’s Smart Financing technology, aims to help SMEs in building wealth & transforming into large enterprises by offering credit solutions, that are designed to enable SMEs in expanding their operations, revenue, and consequently their profit margins. This, in combination with low-interest rates, collateral-free credit options, and 72 hours loan processing timelines, makes seeking financing extremely convenient & efficient for SMEs.
Growth:
This fintech company’s product offerings are very identical to those of it’s competitors in the SME ecosystem – Capital Float, Aye Finance, FlexiLoans, Namaste Credit, NeoGrowth Credit, Vayana Network, to name a few — who are all essentially eyeing the same large addressable market. Oxyzo claims it’s key differentiator lies in its ‘Financial Inclusion of women and first-time borrowers’ & its ‘Approach towards the value chain of borrowers’.
Oxyzo’s Financial Progress:
Oxyzo has garnered attention for its impressive business performance:
Road Ahead:
The recent capital infusion of $200 Million will allow the company to embark on it’s ambitious goals: in expanding it’s digital financial services footprint, scale it’s supply chain financing operations, launch a fixed income product for SMEs, and scaling other fee incomes business lines inclusive of debt capital markets and securities.
