MSMEs, despite being the backbone of the Indian Economy, account for about 95% of the overall credit gap due to the continuing humungous challenges in accessing credit. These challenges stem from triggers such as lack of proper documentation, lack of collaterals, size of the company, poor historical financial record, and low credit scores, among others. Therefore, despite having confirmed orders and commercial viability, funding to MSMEs continue to hit roadblocks because of its distasteful business history. In order to neutralize the above hurdles to ensure fund flow into the MSME sector, adopting a holistic approach of cash flow-based funding (based on realistic projections) would be the key and the much-needed Vitamin B12 pill for the sector. This article by our CEO & Managing Director, Avijit Banerjee, tries to explain the importance of cash flow-based funding, and how it will be revolutionary in not only the revival of the MSMEs, but also in putting them in the driver’s seat for inclusive bottom-up economic growth.

Fintech, over the period, has rapidly evolved in revolutionizing the lending landscape. In this process of evolution, this sector has not only ensured access to a wider option of lenders that’s available to the borrowers, but has also enhanced the probability of funding to the borrowers’ class many of whom may otherwise not have been eligible for funding through the traditional lending channels. While, this evolution has played a pivotal role in partly addressing the credit gap issue, it’s still not enough to almost completely eradicate this gap. Therefore, as the Fintech is constantly evolving, the time has come for it to take the Quantum leap and become a Solutions Architect that will create and provide alternative solutions to funding through the digital platform that would be non-traditional with never-ending possibilities of structuring a funding transaction. There lies the future of Fintech where it will act as a game changer in addressing the alarming credit gap issue within the lending landscape in India. This article by our CEO & Managing Director, Avijit Banerjee, tries to explain the importance of the inflection point that the Fintech sector is currently in, and how it can unleash its true potential through a Tectonic shift by transforming itself from a marketplace to a Solutions Architect.

While an industry ecosystem is fairly spread out with defined value chains, the PE-VC funding seems majorly concentrated on few pockets in the periphery of the ecosystem, thereby creating anomaly in the funding landscape. This, at times, become counterproductive through a double-whammy impact – a) by ignoring the basic industry, the lack of funds in the basic industry may deeply impact the value chain up until the periphery, and b) with bulk of the money chasing few businesses, it leads to the asking valuations spiral up without supporting fundamentals, thereby, creating asset bubbles in certain pockets of the industry ecosystem. This article by our CEO & Managing Director, Avijit Banerjee, tries to explain this anomaly in the funding landscape and emphasizes on how a holistic approach in funding, instead, would lead to an inclusive growth of the entire industry ecosystem.

Avijit Banerjee shares his perspective on how the journey for the business world going to be like in the Post COVID-19 Era. The impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has deformed the structure of the business, which needs to be formatted by pressing the reset button. While businesses conducted worldwide would never be the same before and it would need different tools to survive and revive, the questions that would usually come to one’s mind would be: a) how would this journey going to be in the post COVID era?, b) are we going to see a completely different trend in conducting business operations?, c) how important technology and innovation going to be?, d) how do we see businesses prioritizing and rationalizing costs?, etc. This article from our CEO’s desk highlights some of the trends that may evolve in the Post COVID-19 era.

While family business contributes the largest to India’s economy, they have inherent issues such as cultural ethos, transparency, ethics, etc. These, structural and fundamental impediments haunt companies when they are in the process of migrating into the mainstream market through an IPO. This article from our CEO’s desk tells us how a company can unlock value for the stakeholders by moving away from the promoters’ concept.

This article coming from our CEO’s desk is a provocative topic on valuation fundamentals that tries to highlight the importance of capital structure of a firm and its role in determining value.

When a capital structure is altered – whether in a tax or no tax condition – it does impact the value creation for the shareholders of its firm. This is in contrary to the classic M-M Model that says “the value of a firm is independent of its capital structure. In other words, the value of the firm that is levered will be equal to the value of the unlevered firm in a no-tax situation”. So when a capital structure is altered, it changes the risk profile of the firm, and that impacts the value. The deployment of profits, from the operating level through the net income level, between servicing the debt holders and attributing profits to the equity holders would be the key in determining the value creation for its stakeholders whether it’s a tax or a no-tax world.

With the aim of writing provocative topics on valuation fundamentals, this article from the CEO’s desk emphasizes on the need of reporting the fair value of assets within EPS for investors to take conscious decisions.

EPS – that determines an investor’s share in a company’s earnings for every unit held by it – is an important indicator to the investment decision making process, since it reflects not just the core operations but also material impacts from business decisions taken by the management, and, therefore, puts a lot of emphasis on its true reflection.

The article that was published on one of the knowledge portals talks in detail on why it's so important to reflect the fair value of assets in EPS, and what opportunity does it provide to the existing and the potential new investors in terms of staying invested and entry / exit strategies.

Our CEO’s article - on the relationship between corruption, inflation and interest rates – that was published in July 2017 tries to answer if raising interest rates is the only solution to contain inflation. It also emphasizes that for an economy like India, creating a framework to improve supplies will go a long way to keep inflation under control, thereby leading to a favorable interest rate regime and an era of economic progress.

After having spoken in the Euromoney Asia panel in January 2018 on the needs to strengthen the due diligence process, our CEO wrote this article for the larger interest of the readers and highlighted the gaps in the due diligence mechanism based on the current process practiced in an IPO; how does it compare to the due diligence process in a PE transaction; what are the current best practices globally, and what are the learning; and how we can transform this into a mechanism that instills significant confidence among investors and also ensures inclusive participation in the capital markets – a win-win situation for both the issuer and the market participants.

Fund raising may sound fascinating and interesting, but, in reality, it’s complex and tedious, and requires experts to work on it and steer it towards a successful closure. A company keen on raising funds should completely delegate this to experts, and should co-ordinate with them as a team to ensure success in the shortest possible time. This article reflects our CEO's views on how to embark on a fund raising journey as a team.

During our CEO's recent field visits to Jharkhand and Odisha, he made very interesting and important observations on how the small scale industries are placed in the metals sector, and that these players can do wonders if they are able to access the right mix of funds. But the challenge continues despite the small scale sector being the backbone of Indian economy.