Aye Finance has received a £2,00,000 (Rs 2.05 crore) grant from Transform, a joint initiative led by Unilever, EY and the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The fintech, which provides unsecured small-ticket business loans to the credit-starved micro-enterprise segment, will use these funds to address the challenges of working capital for kirana owners.
Through this new grant, the MSME lender will leverage the extensive expertise of Unilever (one of Transform’s founding organizations) in the FMCG sector to make the on-tap product SwitchPe available to more grocery store owners. Last month, Aye launched its, SwitchPe, to provide credit lines to retailers to procure supplies, which will bring them into the fold of organized lending.
Sanjay Sharma, founder and managing director of Aye Finance, said, “Aye was founded to deliver quality financial services to the MSME sector, and we have found tremendous support from partners equally invested in improving the financial inclusion of the underserved segments. With this collaboration with Transform, we will build momentum for our newly launched buy now pay later (BNPL) product, SwitchPe and solve the funding challenges in the FMCG supply chain.”
Kirana stores account for approximately 88 per cent of India’s retail sector. However, insufficient working capital forces them to operate at a very small scale. Since its inception, Aye Finance has supported over 6 lakh micro enterprises, including 50,000 kirana shops through its customised lending products.
Working with corporates, donors, investors and academics, Transform tests and scales solutions that tackle environmental challenges, improve health and wellbeing, and build inclusive economies; ultimately supporting low-income households.
Established in 2015, it combines grant funding, business insight and wider resources for entrepreneurs with in-depth research. Its aims to increase its impact by working with new partner organisations across Africa, Asia and beyond and has supported over 100 projects in 17 countries.
