Can Innovation in Technology Rescue MSMEs of their Financial Woes? "We believe that for every borrower, there is a lender but there is not platform where both of them can meet each other. "

While everyone is pepped up about the world of enterprise tech and retailers, there is a section of entrepreneurs which is deprived of investors' and ecosystem's suport.

The micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) don't carry the suaveness of having an IIT/IIM background, neither do they have the advantage of hailing from plush locations like Bengaluru, Mumbai or NCR region.

However, there isn't any dearth of talent or opportunities in this region and this sector employs a large population of rural and semi-urban areas.

In an endeavour to strengthen this sector, Rubique's portal aims to provide an online platform for one of crucial & faster growing segment SMEs. In an email interaction with Entrepreneur India, CEO and Founder Manavjeet Singh spoke about the challenges of this sector and how organization plans to deal with the same.

"We saw that SMEs face serious challenges in raising finance from banks and financial institutions and are left at the mercy of local unorganized financiers charging interest of anywhere from 2% pm and above. We saw this as one reason SMEs aren't able to scale up and many face serious challenges in survival. Many SME units have either closed down or are struggling to remain afloat due to this. This is when we decided to investigate into the reasons why SMEs fail to smartly manage their business finance and capital syndication issue," Singh said.

Which are the key sectors that require maximum support from in the form of technology?

It would be unfair to attribute the support to specific segment as it's been observed that MSME segment as whole faces a challenges of access to finance. The biggest validation for the same is $380bln credit gap that is being discussed in every forum. We feel technology can play a great role across segments to provide easy access to finance for MSMEs.

How can credit be made easy for the MSMEs?

We believe that for every borrower, there is a lender but there is not platform where both of them can meet each other. We have created a platform by digitizing the bank's policies so customer can check his eligibility online itself. This reduces the time spent in searching an apt offer as well as brings more certainty for the customer. Also the system integrations that we are doing with Financial Institutions will help to reduce the turnaround time in the process by automating the process of credit assessment.

Has initiatives like Make in India and Startup India eased the woes of MSMEs?

Make in India & Startup India Plan indeed created a lot of positivity among MSMEs. Infact industry has witnessed many initiatives being taken across segments towards MSMEs. Since last few months, many financial institutions have been taking positive steps towards simplifying access to finance to this segment. Even Government is taking steps towards supporting MSMEs & in line with this we have recently signed an MOU with mini ratna, NSIC to develop a platform to ease out financing for their MSME units. We are quite confident that with current trend, the financial woes of MSMEs would definitely be addressed to certain extent.

Singh feels that with the current supportive environment from government & proactive measures/initiatives from industry players, one can expect the rise in competition across segments within the MSME space. Therefore, to survive & sustain in this cut throat competition, he believes everyone needs to hone the entrepreneurial skills.

Rubique recently signed an MOU with National Small Industries Corporation Limited (NSIC), a Mini Ratna Enterprise of Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India. The MOU aims to create an interface which will ease credit facilitation for MSMEs by allowing quicker decision making and evaluation.