Fintech startup 1Silverbullet is helping financial companies go to market 50 percent faster

Entrepreneur Milan Ganatra could’ve been reading books by the seaside, birdwatching, spent his time playing golf or picking up a new hobby after he sold his venture, Miles Software, to Nasdaq-listed EbixCash for $19 million in 2018.

But he decided not to.

Entrepreneurs live a life mired in creative problem solving to the point where it becomes their default operating mode. Finding answers to questions gets programmed into their very DNA – and that was the case with Milan after he sold Miles Software, 19 years after he founded it in 1999.

Milan has seen the financial industry metamorphosise in India — from back in 1999 when everything was done analogously, on paper, to now, where a myriad of tech solutions have helped bring the world of finance to people’s fingertips.

He noticed how, throughout the development cycle of financial technology solutions, the chain of communication between entities that provided financial products and consumers was broken and lacking.

"I witnessed first-hand how communication processes that were heavily paper-based were cumbersome and caused more harm than good to both parties involved, and in some cases, were even a deterrent to investors," he quips.

An entrepreneur for life, Milan decided to solve the fintech problem he discovered, and, with two decades of experience in the sector backing him up, founded 1Silverbullet in 2021.

Mumbai-based 1Silverbullet essentially helps financial institutions and entities that provide financial products connect with consumers on a single platform. It offers an easy-to-use plug-and-play console to financial institutions where they can choose and integrate APIs based on their specific needs, and then finally test their end-product out in a sandbox environment.

Its clientele includes all sorts of financial products and service providers, including wealth management firms, insurance companies, new-age tech firms that sell insurance or investment products, and banks.

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Democratising workflows via tech

1Silverbullet helps financial institutions and platforms quickly digitise and integrate their backend to start offering consumers products and services. Financial products and service providers can build their platforms easily by using the available APIs, and offer unique journeys to their customers.

Milan estimates this system helps financial companies cut down their time to go live in the market by 50 percent, while also helping them save money on hiring expert platform developers.

"In addition, the headache of ongoing maintenance is ours," he tells YourStory.

The startup earns its revenue from platform usage, maintenance, and on every transaction that passes through its system.

1SilverBullet currently has over 80 portfolio management service companies and alternative investment funds on its platform, including the likes of Marcellus, Amicus, TATA, SageOne, and White Oak.

"We are currently signing at least one large enterprise client per day," Milan says, adding nearly 3X more clients will be joining the platform over the next few months.

The startup says it intends to add more products to service operators that deal in corporate fixed deposits, corporate bonds, and structured notes by the end of this year.

The self-funded startup is planning to raise some seed capital soon. By October, it hopes to start seeing revenue from operations, and will then work towards hitting $200 million in revenue over the next five years.

Milan adds that 1Silverbullet is targeting profitability from the third year of operations.

The startup’s competitors include the likes of Ensuredit, Plaid, Riskovery, Akoya, Setu Fintech, and Galileo Financial Tech, among others.

The total global open banking market is expected to be valued at $43 billion by 2026, a CAGR of 24.4 percent from 2019 when it was valued at $7.30 billion in 2018, according to an Allied Market Research report.

Financial API companies have been mushrooming ever since the fintech revolution came to India, especially since the pandemic highlighted the importance of being digital. With consumers every day looking for online resources to help them manage their finances better, solutions like 1Silverbullet have the potential to disrupt financial companies’ path to digitisation.