[Exclusive Interview] This Unique Startup Offers Investments, Insurance, and Lending Infrastructure For B2B Ecosystem

Recently we interacted with Mr. Milan Ganatra, Founder & CEO 1Silverbullet, and asked him about the purpose of his startup, and his vision and mission.

Here are the highlights from the interview..

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Take us through 1Silverbullet and the idea behind its inception?

The idea for 1Silverbullet came to me when I was running my previous company, Miles Software. In my dual role as a fintech provider and investor over the last two decades, I closely saw the flaws in the communication chain between financial instrument providers and investors. These communication processes, which relied heavily on paperwork, physical signatures, and human intervention, were clearly inefficient. This did more harm than good for both parties and often became more of a deterrent to investors.

I knew there had to be a way to help the ecosystem evolve into a more optimised  network. Using my decades of experience with financial technology I worked towards identifying suitable solutions that helped streamline workflows, enhance the communication channels between all parties involved and resolve the operational inadequacies that were ultimately preventing the country from reaching its full potential when it came to the digital penetration of financial products. In this way, the concept of 1Silverbullet was born.

I founded 1SilverBullet in 2021, a completely COVID-born company, it is India’s first B2B financial gateway platform for the three verticals within the financial services industry: wealth, insurance, and lending.

How does 1Silverbullet resolve inefficiencies within the financial ecosystem?

We are trying to eliminate excessive offline and often manual documentation, bringing in transparency through advanced API gateways that can rectify a disjointed infrastructure.

Leveraging Blockchain, the platform acts as a single point of contact for investors and financial institutions, linking them in one place via a secure API. Enabling players in the space to acquire and sell investment avenues such as AIFs, MFs, PMS, Insurance, and similar products.

Currently, we are operational with the Investments and Insurance gateways, and by the coming quarter, we will be LIVE with the lending gateway as well. 

What are your key products/offerings?

We provide a user-friendly console for financial institutions to pick and choose integration APIs based on their requirements and run pilot tests within a sandbox environment. The platform also features API performance tracking, measurement of calls made (for billing), high-quality documentation to help customers understand how they can use 1Silverbullet’s API to run their products, platforms.

For some use cases, where newcomers in the industry haven’t built the platform yet, 1Silverbullet can create a UI or SAAS layer and launch it as a subsection of 1Silverbullet platform. However, for the rest, the platform will be purely an API service platform. 

Our biggest USP is that we provide newage companies with an off-the-shelf, digitally-enabled back-end infrastructure, i.e the connectivity. In addition to that, the headache of ongoing maintenance is ours. This gives them the freedom to focus on their front-end and core strength and not worry about integrating the back-end, hence, cutting down their time to go live in the market by 50%. 

Who is your target audience? Can you name a few and some use cases of how you are helping them 

1Silverbullet is an API ecosystem that is not tied to any particular customer profile, and everyone who works within the financial service ecosystem is my prospect. Any financial institution across the country, whether it’s an asset manager, an insurance company, a high-tech new age platform that wants to sell insurance, investment products or any financial products really, even a bank.

Currently, we’ve closed 100+ successful partnerships across financial service providers within the wealth and insurance sectors. This includes 30% of the country’s top PMS suppliers like Abakkus, TATA, SageOne, White Oak, and more, as well as six out of the top 10 life insurance companies in the country. We are currently on an incredible track speed of signing at least one large corporate client per day. 

What are your short-term and long-term plans with 1Silverbullet?

While we are currently LIVE with PMS and AIF within the wealth gateway, we intend to add more products such as corporate fixed deposits, corporate bonds, and structured notes by the end of this calendar year.  We have recently also gone LIVE on insurance gateway with Life Insurance products, we shall shortly be releasing Health Insurance and Motor vehicle insurance.

As part of our 5-year plan, we hope to introduce new products and broaden our spectrum to include travel, transportation, and other verticals. In terms of pure numbers, we are looking at achieving a topline of at least $200 million by 2026.  

As we build our clientele we would also increase our staff strength, with a workforce of at least 200 employees.

I am very optimistic about the potential that a company like ours holds for the future. With 1Silverbullet, we want to be the UPI for investments and insurance and be a truly transformational force for the financial services ecosystem.