CashFlo, an integrated accounts payables and supply chain financing platform, has expanded its product portfolio by launching its flagship Payments and Accounts Payables (AP) Automation and Payments product suite. This suite leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to automate complex tasks such as invoice-to-pay processes, approval workflows, and real-time GST checks, enabling businesses across industries.

According to Tipalti's 2022 survey, only 9 per cent of businesses globally have fully automated their AP function, which is even lower in India. This means that the majority still rely on manual processes, causing stress to AP teams, increasing the risk of errors, and hindering decision-making, cash flow optimisation, and supplier relationships. 

CashFlo's AP Automation and Payments suite addresses these challenges related to corporate finance functions and empowering enterprises to achieve operational excellence and stay on top of compliance.

Ankur Bhageria, CEO and founder of CashFlo, said that the start-up aims to help companies grow by helping finance teams focus on business instead of transactional processes and worrying about hygiene areas. Unfortunately, in India, no strong SaaS businesses in finance automation operate at scale; most SaaS solutions focus on the western markets. 

"We wanted to build something high quality for India yet make it affordable. During its pilot phase, our AI-powered AP Automation and Payments suite reduced processing costs by up to 80 per cent and accelerated financial closure by 3x for large and medium enterprises," he added. "We also saw that businesses experienced 95 per cent reductions in payment errors and witnessed improved margins of up to 7 per cent, all while ensuring full compliance with regulatory requirements." 

CashFlo utilises advanced AI-powered OCR to capture and book liabilities with near-perfect accuracy, improving invoice processing. Ensuring proactive vendor GST validation, compliance history checks and invoice filing status verification empowers businesses to prevent ITC losses from non-compliant vendors.

Achieving automated processing of over 95 per cent of invoices, CashFlo ensures a 10-point check on every invoice, including GST number check, e-invoicing check, item-level rate and quantity match with PO and GRN, vendor bank account matching, etc. With CashFlo, businesses can effortlessly integrate payments with unlimited bank accounts in under six weeks, eliminating traditional host-to-host banking integrations' complexity and time-consuming nature.

Businesses can establish customisable multi-level approval flows, catering to invoices from different teams and amounts. This ensures a robust corporate governance structure and compliance with internal policies. 

The suite seamlessly integrates with ERPs, including SAP, Microsoft, Tally and Oracle, facilitating real-time reconciliation and accelerating book closure by three times.

According to Verified Market Research the global AP market was valued at $8.77 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $17.61 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 9.1 per cent. About two-thirds of finance professionals expect full automation of their AP process by 2025.  

Established in 2018 by Ankur Bhageria and Dushyant Agarwal, CashFlo serves over 3,000 customers like Murugappa Group, Zydus Healthcare, Kalyani Group, Lupin, Aditya Birla Group, Bajaj Group, IFB, Apar Industries to emerging corporates like Mosaic Wellness, Souled Store, Durian and Cona Electricals. It has a network of more than 2,00,000 businesses and is working towards tripling its customer base this year. 

Last year, it raised its second round of capital of $8.7 million (Rs 70 crore approximately) led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing investor Elevation Capital.

Additionally, the fintech processes over Rs 18,000 crore of invoices annually, and aims to double this by 2023-end. The company claimed to be growing at 25 per cent month-on-month, and expects the launch of the AP and Payments Automation product suite to scale this growth rate to 150 percent in the next six months.