Indo-Israel electronic distribution venture EPRS BuySmart impacts the lives of 2,50,000 retailers across 3500 towns in India
EPRS Buysmart was conceptualized way back in 2005 in Israel by Dan Matalona, who is a serial entrepreneur with more than four decades of experience in international business across China, Israel, Romania, Turkey, Nepal, and India.
Later, it became an Indo-Israeli venture when Himanshoo Patil joined EPRS Buysmart in 2013 to take care of the India operations. He comes with over 18 years of experience in new age e-commerce and payment technology businesses.
Prior to joining EPRS BuySmart, Himanshoo was involved in various new-age e-commerce initiatives and worked across e-commerce, e-travel, e-payments and other lines of businesses.
EPRS BuySmart aggregates and distributes different services like recharges, remittances, bill payments, travel, insurance, and financial services from multiple suppliers on a single platform and extends it to their distributors on a prepaid model.
It acts as a cash collection and disbursal platform for retailers. The technology enables the retailer to sell multiple products using the same user wallet. The company aims to help unbanked population do money transfers, account opening, disbursement, and last-mile banking.
It has tied up with various service providers starting from Dish TV, Big TV, BSNL, Idea Cellular, MTNL, MTS, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, ICICI Bank, RBL Bank, Videocon, Uninor, Aircel, and more.
EPRS BuySmart's offerings
The company offers recharge services for DTH, mobility and Internet service providers (ISP), bill payments for telecom, ISPs mobility, financial services as remittance, account opening, loans, cash collection, and cash disbursal solutions at their retail counters.
"We are the business correspondents for leading banks to reach out to the unbanked population undertaking money transfers, account opening, disbursement, and last-mile banking on their behalf. We also work as a cash collection and disbursal point at our retail location for banks," says Himanshoo.
With its prepaid digital services, the company has helped service providers like TataSky, Videocon D2H, Sun TV and others create the next level of digital distribution across India. Currently, the company is present in more than 3,500 towns and has a presence in more than 70per cent of all electoral constituencies in India. It has a team of 125 members.
Himanshoo says,
"We are now focussed on building a strong network of retailers across India, by providing entrepreneurial opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid and enabling new generation of distribution services across this channel. Over the decade, EPRS has reached all remote areas of the country and is now the most widely spread, independent, and third-party electronic distribution network across India."
Till date, EPRS BuySmart has been able to impact the lives of 2,50,000 retailers across more than 3,500 towns in Tier II/III regions across India.
Serving the unbanked population
EPRS BuySmart works majorly with Tier II and III towns across India with consumers being unbanked. Its reach ranges from Manipur, Sikkim, Bihar, West Bengal, Tripura, Odisha in the East to Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Daman & Dui in the West. In the North, they cover towns across Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan to towns across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Pondicherry, Karnataka in the South.
Cashflow
EPRS BuySmart generates revenue out of the number of products and amount of transactions it enables across retail distribution. Currently, it handles more than 3,00,000 transactions daily and, in the next fiscal year, expects to increase the number of transaction to 4,00,000 daily. The company is now working with logistics, education and banking sectors as a last-mile partner for e-commerce providers.
"With a vision to strengthen our payment super highway every year, we continuously strive to add more towns and increase our reach not only in terms of the number of cities/towns, but the number of retailers within each region as well," adds Himanshoo.