• Notification Date: 24-04-2024
• Notification No: N/A

Sachet-sized Loans based on GST data & AI/ML tools to become Available for MSMEs

Fintech innovation company OPL, which has developed the platform - PSB loans in 59 minutes, is planning to launch two new facilities in the coming months. This move is based on the possiblity of improving credit access to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

This includes a sachet-sized loan product to help these businesses meet their working capital requirements based on their goods and services tax invoices. The facility, which will be offered by most big banks, is likely to be launched before Diwali, said Jinand Shah, Managing Director and CEO, OPL.

“These would be cash flow based loans for which we are working with SIDBI,” said Shah in an interaction with Business Today. It would target over 90 lakh MSMEs that have an annual turnover of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 crore. The facility would be based on OPL’s GST Sahay, which is an invoice-based lending platform which allows SMEs to compare and select loan offers from multiple lenders.

OPL is also working on another facility that would enable MSMEs to understand their credit worthiness, which will also be launched soon, he said. This would be based on OPL’s FIT Rank tool, which is an AI/ML based credit rank for MSMEs that’s based on finance, income, and transaction data. The ranking system combines GST, bank statements, and Income Tax Returns (ITR) to create a reliable ranking for MSMEs that lenders such as banks and financial institutions can use to make lending decisions.

Shah said the objective behind the new facility would be to provide MSMEs the same tool to help them assess how AI/ML looks at their strengths and weaknesses from a lender’s point of view. “It would also offer complete analytics of their data and why AI is giving them a particular rank,” Shah said.

Meanwhile, talking about PSB loans in 59 minutes, Shah said the platform has till date sanctioned a total of 249,469 proposals worth Rs 86,598 crore. Disbursals for 229,833 proposals amounting to Rs 69,832 crore of loans have already been done. The platform enables in principal digital approval for collateral free loans for Rs 10 lakh to Rs 5 crore to MSMEs in less than an hour. About 300,000 MSMEs are using the platform and the average loan size is Rs 30 lakh.