Open Financial Technologies, which operates a ‘neo-bank’ that helps small businesses automate and run their finances, will now focus on wealth management and lending even though the Covid-19 pandemic threatens the adoption of new products in the upcoming financial year.
“Wealth management and lending are a core focus for the year. We are working with banks to create lending products. We have a lot of data on small enterprises to create lending products. Unlike consumer lending, every business behaves differently,” Open’s Founder and CEO Anish Achuthan told ET. “The pandemic could impact the adoption of new products as businesses will focus on fundamentals.”
The fintech startup—which has over 4 lakh businesses on its platform and counts Tiger Global Management, 3one4 Capital and Speedinvest among its investors—is also building an app store with productivity tools such as payroll and tax filing, helping it to monetise and engage customers.
Open operates as a neo-bank—a digital bank that offers nearly all the features of a physical bank. It helps small and medium-sized businesses in India to maintain multiple bank accounts, bookkeeping of their daily spending, and pay salaries to employees.
Achuthan said he doesn’t see a challenge in the bank’s core platform. “We are working with our banking partners to bring tailored lending products for small businesses to meet their working capital needs,” he said. “We need to support small business as the economy is weak.”
Open’s app store currently has 10 apps, including ones for marketplace listings, tax filing, and bookkeeping. It plans to open up this app store to developers in the coming months. “We have a separate team for connected commerce. The next phase is to expose developers to build more apps. It leads to more engagement and more monetisation. So, they don’t have to move away from the dashboard. These hooks add value,” he said.
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