Scoring timely credit or loans is essential for accelerating growth for small businesses. They need the extra capital to expand their operations, infrastructure, or to maintain a steady flow of working capital to carry out the day-to-day activities.
Small businesses & startups struggle to secure additional capital sources via the traditional lending system & are turning to neobanks for collateral-free, instant working capital loans. Click To TweetIf you are a small business owner or a startup founder looking for additional capital sources to take your business to the next level, you’ll resonate with Gowri Shankar’s story, founder of one of our partner companies – GroSuper.
Read on.
Growth journey of GroSuper
GroSuper is a growing on-demand online delivery startup. Started in 2018 with small offline stores across the city, GroSuper is now simplifying the life of Bangaloreans by delivering all sorts of physical goods right from groceries, vegetables to gas cylinders within 90 minutes.
Here’s a peek at how Razorpay Capital helped them to make it possible.
The Initial days
Like many startups & small businesses, GroSuper’s initial funding came from Shankar & his friends’ hard-earned savings. The money was used to set up offline stores & launch a delivery app to kickstart the business. The operational expenses were paid via a personal credit card, which led to a low Experian & CIBIL credit score.
Business expansion during Covid-19
GroSuper’s business model was amongst the many that thrived during Covid-19. While they had the perfect solution to serve their customers during a pandemic, they needed extra capital to war off the various problems brought about by a nation-wide lockdown.
Problem at hand – Need for extra Capital
Pre-lockdown, GroSuper stocked up their offline stores with goods by providing credit to the suppliers. During the lockdown, that wasn’t possible.
With uncertain sales, GroSuper could not pay vendors on time, which posed the threat of losing out on the inventory that was pivotal to GroSuper’s business. Due to the low Experian & CIBIL credit score, banks & other traditional lenders refused to provide GroSuper with the working capital they needed.
To keep the business running, Shankar tells us he resorted to unregulated lenders charging upwards of a 6% interest rate per month. He says, “Unfortunately, money leads to more money, so we had to take the loans at a high premium.”
Razorpay Capital to the rescue
We at Razorpay Capital provide loans by pre-approving businesses on past consumer transactions rather than a credit score or collateral, which was precisely what GroSuper needed to keep their business thriving during the uncertain times of a pandemic. 
Shankar tells us that with the quick processing & fast loan disbursement by Razorpay he could pay the vendors & maintain a level of certainty on the supply-side. With that, they could meet the increasing customer demands in the market.
The result? GroSuper grew its business by 2X in the last 6 months.
Learning from GroSuper’s journey
When asked about advice to his fellow entrepreneurs, Gowri says that the key game-changer has been increasing the distribution channel for the business by launching a full-fledged app and web platform.
He also points out that addressing customer issues instantly is of utmost importance in improving customer trust and loyalty. And we were excited to be a part of GroSuper’s journey in increasing customer satisfaction too via disbursement of instant refunds. 
The road ahead for GroSuper
GroSuper is all set to reach a state of near-100% fulfillment. With the main focus on increasing the team size and adding more features to the app, they are building a system that accurately predicts the demands of their products so that they can manage their inventories better, and in turn, reduce the inventory cost.
We are super thrilled to be a part of GroSuper’s upcoming journey.
If you’re a small business owner or a startup founder with a great idea but just not enough capital to fund it, we’re a match. We’d love to help you take your business to new heights with instant settlements & quick business loans.
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