The marketplace model is now geared towards empowering the sellers so that the platform keeps growing. And the latest to join this bandwagon is Ebay.
In order to make their sellers more powerful and independent, Ebay has teamed up with Capital Floats, a digital financing firm based in Bangalore. Sellers on Ebay can now get loans upto Rs 1 crore, without any collateral.
Capital Floats provides short term capital loans to SMEs (Small & Medium Enterprises), using technology as a platform. As per their website, their missions is to “bridge the current gap in the market with innovative and flexible credit products for SMEs, delivered in an efficient and customer-friendly manner.”
Technically, Capital Float is the trade name of Zen Lefin Pvt. Ltd., a non-banking finance company (NBFC) registered with the RBI.
While announcing this news, Pankay Ukey, Director, Seller Service and Technology Category, eBay India said, “Our association with Capital Float is an effort to support our sellers by providing them financial assistance and help them ship more,”
Capital Float has already teamed up with leading ecommerce players such as Snapdeal, Flipkart, Myntra, PayTM; and within a short span, they have distributed Rs 10 crore worth of loans to Ebay sellers.
At a time when there are around 3 crore registered SMEs in the country, there exists a demand for Rs 26 trillion worth of loans & credits to make them profitable. However, Banks are only capable of providing Rs 7 Lakh crore maximum as loans to these SMEs. This wide gap between the demand and supply of loans for SMEs is the space where Ebay and Capital Float, both are concentrating.
Once sellers and SMEs are able to procure short term loans using Ebay India’s platform, they will attract more SMEs and thus both Capital Float and Ebay can benefit.
Other Ecommerce Marketplaces Offering Credit & Loans
The trend of empowering SMEs within an online marketplace started last year, when Flipkart signed MoU with Federation of Indian Micro and Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) and National Center for Design and Product Development (NCDPD) to help SMEs raise their bars and use technology for all round growth. Provision of loans and credit was made easy for entrepreneurs.
In June this year, Amazon decided to assist sellers on thier platform using their in-house credit service called ‘Amazon Lending’; which was open only for select SMEs who had shown excellent track record.
The same month, Alibaba announced a partnership with ICICI bank to provide fast and low interest based loan service for SMEs.
Last month, Snapdeal announced a unique credit service for their sellers called ‘Capital Assist’, which will approve instant loans within few days.
Digital Marketplaces now keen on empowering their sellers via easy and low interest loans is the best thing to happen to India’s entrepreneurial eco-system. This will not only encourage more entrepreneurs, but also enable more number of business transactions and deals.
Have you used any such loan and credit facility from Indian ecommerce companies? Do share your experience by commenting right here!