EnKash is aiming to touch $4-5 Billion spend mark by end of 2021: Hemant Vishnoi, Co-Founder, EnKash

The use of technology is reinventing the entire financial segment across the globe. And, with Covid-19 the urgency to deploy tech-driven solutions has become inevitable. Digital payments, in particular, have gained a lot of significance lately and to explore a bit more about the growth, Elets News Network (ENN) recently had an exclusive conversation with Hemant Vishnoi, Co-Founder, EnKash. During the interaction, he talks about the current client base and the aim of touching the $4-5 Billion spend mark by the end of 2021.

About EnKash

EnKash is a next-generation Fintech Innovation Start-up that develops products and services to serve the B2B enterprises. It began its operations in 2018. It was the first to partner with RuPay to launch their commercial cards program. EnKash has been the first to launch a commercial card acceptance platform for non-travel spends and come up with D2I ™ product for issuers having non-acquiring solutions. It has also delivered the first-of-its-kind WhatsApp based intuitive expense management solution, to help streamline, simplify and digitize expenses. The firm uses artificial intelligence algorithms to touch every aspect of B2B transactions. 

Excerpts of the conversation:

  1. Give us an overview of EnKash. How is it different from other players in the gamut?

EnKash is a payments platform for businesses to simplify cash flows. Launched in 2018, EnKash has garnered trust & credibility among banks and businesses for its innovative financial offerings. Having partnered with banks, NBFCs, networks like RuPay & MasterCard, it is the only India based platform which provides end to end commercial card issuance and acceptance. Growing number of businesses are now able to manage their short-term working capital needs through commercial cards and facilitate all their core & non-core business expenses through EnKash platform.

EnKash has now evolved as a one stop comprehensive platform to take care of all business cash flows. Today, businesses not only use EnKash platform for commercial cards but are also able to connect their buyers, suppliers & in-house systems for automating their payable & collections and availing various other financial products. The differentiation lies in the fact that EnKash tends to lead innovations giving a new, simple and technological advance solution to all business payment problems. With the short span of just two years, EnKash has created a name in the financial services industry and trust of financial services providers, businesses & their partners. More than 65,000 businesses & FIs on the platform support the credibility.

EnKash believes in the philosophy of tech-first company. EnKash has built a state of the art commercial card issuance system which comes handy for banks which are non-issuers so far. The system has all modern-day capabilities to launch a card program in a matter of a few days. EnKash is at an advanced stage to launch its commercial card program with 2-3 banks that have been non-issuers so far.

We are creating industry-first products:

EnKash has been the first to launch a commercial card acceptance platform for non-travel spends.

Also, we were the first to come up with D2I ™ product for issuers having non-acquiring solutions. In order to cater to the pain points of the underserved SMBs and Startups, EnKash launched India’s First Corporate Card specially designed for them, under the Freedom Card program.

The program offers the widest range of corporate card variants, crafted for various business needs.

EnKash’s product line and domain understanding has led to long term partnerships with nationalized and international banks.

EnKash was the first partner with RuPay to launch their commercial cards program. EnKash has also delivered the first-of-its-kind WhatsApp based intuitive expense management solution, to help streamline, simplify and digitize expenses. EnKash believes in being ahead of the curve, so as to create technologically advanced, yet simple to use business payment solutions.

  1. Enkash has recently partnered with NPCI’s RuPay cards for commercial cards. What innovative solutions as a part of this alliance?

Our endeavor to provide innovative offerings created a trust and name of EnKash in the financial ecosystem. EnKash, therefore, became the first to partner with RuPay to launch their commercial cards program. This corporate credit card would utilise the indigenous RuPay network, issued through digital and paperless on-boarding for the target segment – SMEs, MSMEs and startups.

The users can manage all of their business payments through this commercial card. The card program will help simplify and streamline business expenses and finances. The card also offers a variable billing cycle, something which has been a concern for a lot of businesses. With instant bulk pay-outs, the businesses will be able to streamline and automate their cumbersome process of multiple locations or branches.

As a part of the innovative offerings and value-adds, the card comes with an intuitive dashboard for businesses to analyse their spends and make better business decisions. It is also loaded with EnKash’s first-of-its-kind WhatsApp based intuitive expense management solution, to help streamline, simplify, control and digitize all employee and business-related expenses on the go. This can help employees to upload receipts and get approvals instantly, leading to efficient business operations experience. Overall, the card gives the power to the businesses to handle management and purchasing requirements seamlessly.

  1. EnKash has integrated with WhatsApp. What convenience is it offering to the customers with regards to expense tracking?

As previously also mentioned, the card program comes with a first-of-its-kind WhatsApp based intuitive expense management solution. Tracking employee expenses is a big pain point for any business, especially a startup/SME. The system is built for businesses of all sizes, but has been taken due consideration on some pain points of Startups/SMEs. Our Whatsapp based expense tracking system gives the power to business to track employee spends through a simple chat based integrated feature. Whenever the authorised employee makes a transaction, he/she can instantly upload receipts/memos through whatsapp for approval. This negates any requirement to save physical copy of bills (which can also be lost /destroyed otherwise).

The ease of transactions and expense tracking is something that is the focal of this system. This highly simple, secure & easy to use system is a great value to businesses looking to ease the expense systems. Such an arrangement helps in the reconciliation of all bills for a particular employee/department/office. Managing overall fund requirement optimally with flexible allocation option also becomes a value add benefit of this system.

This highly simple, secure & easy to use system is a great value to businesses looking to ease the expense systems.

  1. Tell us about a ‘business prepaid card’. How are you targeting 10,000 businesses with this product?

The newly launched EnKash Business Prepaid Card is our latest offering taking forward our mission to simplify business cash flows. We have a lot of clients who operate in multi-location premises, or work under multiple retail or branch outlets. Over the last few months, we realised that there was a friction in their business payment process which entailed multiple bank accounts to be used for pay-outs of different branches.

We offered  simple and effective solution, through which there would be no need for multiple bank accounts, and the central office of the corporate can have complete centralised financial control over the branch’s expenditure and pay-outs, yet allowing branches to undertake their own transactions through their own cards. B2B payments are very manual, and require paperwork, especially in a multi-branch format. This card mitigates all the paperwork required, and smoothens, and fastens the payment process. Earlier, many corporations used to have a separate current account for each branch. With this Business Card, businesses can now create just a single central current account, and give a designated business card to each branch office for their expenses.

The card can be used for all business payments, including but not restricted to vendor payments, utility bill payments, GST payments and more! The card comes with a complimentary expense management system for real time tracking of expenses, and an intuitive dashboard that helps in insights for better business decision making. Our target of 10,000 businesses, is based on our market understanding and the scope for such a product. We have already offered our beta set of clients, whom we have identified have friction in their business payments for multi-locations. Our market development team has also identified a lot of sectors where we can provide real value addition with this offering, including lot of retail and logistics services. Additionally, while the product was in Beta-stage, we received a lot of positive feedback from our clients on the offering. It has also created a good word-of-mouth for the Business Card. This has led to a lot of inbound interest from a lot of businesses.

  1. How are you planning to process around $4-5 billion of annual spends in the coming year? What are your further plans for 2021?

The B2B market has started evolving on digitization and there are close to $400-500 billlion spends from 8-10 million businesses expected on digitization. These 8-10 million businesses are those who have partial digitization w.r.t ERP or accounting systems.

Currently, with more than 65,000 clients and 100,000 users, EnKash is processing more than $2Bn spends. Given the double-digit growth, we are expecting to touch the $4-5 Bn spends mark by the end of 2021. Additionally, we are continuously creating newer products and offerings that would help each of the entities in the financial ecosystem – from large organisations, to mid-size and SMEs and Start-ups, and even our partners like banks, NBFCs, financial institutions etc. The plan is to continue creating technological advanced, yet simple to implement and use products that can simplify business cash flow for the ecosystem. We will keep on adding to our kitty of Industry/segment first products that can create value for businesses at large.

 We will continue to work to streamline the B2B payments processing, to mitigate risks and creating a trusted financial ecosystem. More partnerships with banks, payment networks and other financial institutions, is also in the pipeline. This will also help us we move one step closer in the journey to create value in the business payments and commercial credit card ecosystem in India.

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