How IIT leads in encouraging research and innovation among SMBs and other top stories of the week
This week’s top picks include IIT-Delhi incubated healthcare brand Clensta and OkCredit, a free business accounting app founded by three IITians.
This week, SMBStory’s top picks include , an IIT-Delhi incubated brand that helps soldiers, patients maintain personal hygiene with its waterless products, and , founded by three IIT graduates. It is a free business accounting app that has over 5.5 million MSMEs on its platform.
OkCredit
Harsh Pokharna, Gaurav Kumar, and Aditya Prasad, Co-founders of OkCredit
If the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown has taught Indian MSMEs anything, it is that digital, contactless payments are here to stay. This comes in wake of the need to record and account monetary transactions digitally.
Bengaluru-based startup OkCredit’s founders may not have predicted the pandemic in 2017, but they were willing to place their faith in building mobile-based digital accounting solutions for MSMEs.
Frequently interacting with local grocery stores, IIT Kanpur graduates Harsh Pokharna, Gaurav Kumar, and Aditya Prasad noticed shopkeepers would do most of their accounting on paper. Tallying took long, the process was prone to human error, and the small slips of paper could be easily misplaced.
This led them to launch OkCredit - a free, digital-based credit balance recording solution for small business owners in 2017.
Harsh Pokharna, Co-founder and CEO, OkCredit, says the company’s USP is that its products are simple, secure, and technologically advanced. They run on a basic smartphone and help automate business transactions of retailers with customers and wholesalers.
It has 5.5 million active users and saw transactions worth $7.5 billion recorded in October 2020.
Clensta
Founder and CEO, Puneet Gupta, Clensta
Puneet Gupta, sales and marketing graduate from IIM Calcutta started his career with the US-based technology and manufacturing company Honeywell. Fascinated by the growth of the Indian startup ecosystem during the last decade, he decided to leave his well-paying job at the US-based MNC to work with Indian startups, specifically catering to the defence sector.
While working in the sector for eight years, he closely observed the unhygienic conditions of the soldiers working in extreme weather conditions in places such as Siachin, Kargil, and Drass.
The challenge of not being able to maintain personal hygiene (like not bathing for days) led Puneet to develop waterless technology products in 2016 under the brand name Clensta.
In an interaction with SMBStory, Puneet Gupta, Founder and CEO, Clensta, says, “Starting up needs a strong idea but to sustain the business, an entrepreneur needs huge funds and infrastructure. To create innovative healthcare products, we needed a strong R&D, and thus, we joined hands with IIT Delhi to help us make hygiene accessible for anyone, anytime, and anywhere.”
While Puneet is the sole founder of Clensta, Prof (Dr) Anurag Rathore (Department of Chemical Engineering - IIT Delhi) serves as the Scientific Advisor for the brand.
Situated in IIT Delhi’s Biotechnology Business Incubation Facility, Clensta has developed a waterless body bath and shampoo that can be used by defence personnel, patients, elderlies, and adventure enthusiasts to take baths without water while maintaining proper hygiene.
For the same, it has developed a simple formulation devoid of alcohol, SLS, and any other harmful ingredients. These products can be directly applied to hair and body, massaged, and dried off using a towel, without any use of water.
Clensta has raised undisclosed angel investments for scaling its product and portfolio from shareholders and investors, including Sanjeev Jain, an IIT Delhi alum and a seasoned angel investor, and Indian Angel Network and its maiden VC fund - IAN Fund.
The Delhi-based company rakes in an annual turnover of Rs 3.5 crore.
SOLV
Jiten Arora, Venture Lead, SOLV, and Global Head for SME Platforms, SC Ventures
An expert in commercial banking and SME platforms, Jiten Arora is a firm believer in India’s small business ecosystem. He believes that simplifying growth for ambitious entrepreneurs and MSMEs in emerging markets is one of the most pressing challenges that financial institutions can help to tackle.
Earlier this month, Jiten, who is Global Head for SME Platforms, SC Ventures (a business unit of Standard Chartered) and Venture Lead, SOLV, oversaw the commercial launch of SOLV – a full-stack B2B ecommerce platform for MSMEs to improve supply chain efficiency for sustainable growth.
“If an MSME cannot expand its ecosystem of buyers, sellers and suppliers to do business with, it is going to be limited in size and scale. Because of COVID-19, there is more receptivity to digital solutions like SOLV. The platform has the potential to positively impact millions of local MSMEs by helping them achieve sustainable growth," he says.
As the Indian market moves towards being data-rich, SOLV is plugging into these data sources and building simple and intuitive technology-led commerce and financial services solutions for MSMEs. Jiten believes these can help solve problems across customer onboarding, alternative credit scoring and underwriting, digitising operations, and improving the efficiency of supply chains.
In an interview with SMBStory, Jiten takes a deep dive into SOLV, describes how SC Ventures built the platform, and explains how MSMEs can use it.
Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan
