Startup ‘SpiderG’ Uses Blockchain To Help Fellow Micro Entrepreneurs
SpiderG is a payment collection application for micro businesses which provide subscription services to their customers. A lot of times It becomes difficult to find out who is paying and who is not because one has to go through a lot of apps to reconcile and match every transaction.
SpiderG sends automated bills on email and SMS to these micro businesses’ customers on a specified date, and their customers can make payments choosing any of the payment methods like Google Pay, Paytm , PhonePe and even cash.
Amid such critical situations, how is the fintech sector faring? Let’s find out!
How do you think is the fintech sector going to upsurge in the near future?
We will see digitatisation of micro-businesses and the phenomenal rise in the adoption of digital payments. Need for social distancing, no touch commerce, and avoidance of physically transferable cash will lead rise to online transactions and would bring a shift in consumers’ everyday payment habits and would facilitate financial inclusion at a macro level.
With consumers shifting to digital channels it would enable every business, be it small scale or large scale, to embrace digital practices into their process. Even micro-entrepreneurs like local cable operators, local Internet service providers, newspaper vendors, milk vendors are increasingly preferring to adopt digital processes for payment collection than doing it manually.
What is the exclusiveness of your start-up, that’s unique from other gigantic players in the market?
SpiderG is an Ontime Payment collection app for micro-businesses. Businesses that bill the same amount to their customers every month. They have a collection problem because with a large number of customers it gets difficult to track who has paid and who has not, and existing apps like Google Pay and Paytm don’t help much.
Gigantic players like GooglePay, Paytm, Phonepe all are payment apps means they are methods through which consumers choose to make payments.
Talking about competition, any payment app & cash is our competition because these are the methods through which micro-businesses can collect payments. But how will micro-merchants, say a cable operator, track whether all of his 500 plus customers have made the payment or not. Payment applications like Google Pay, Paytm, etc. have been designed for end consumers like us to make the payments but does not cover such cases and requirements of micro-merchants to maintain a ledger of each & every customer, send reminders for payment and do auto reconciliation of online & even offline payments. Imagine a reconciliation problem for a small merchant.
This is where we come into the picture, SpiderG is designed to solve micro-businesses’ payment collection and cash flow management problem. What makes it unique is that it can send automated bills to their end customers with payment links, send Artificial intelligence bases reminders, gives choices of multiple payment options to their end customers, integration with existing current account and ease of salary payment, utility payment and expenses. With SpiderG, micro-businesses don’t need to use any bookkeeping software, banking app, payment app or wallet to manage their business.
What is the latest mode of technology that you are catering to?
We have used a combination of multiple technologies in building this solution. Here are some important technology modules :
- We are proprietary inhouse developed e-invoicing & subscription management technology for recurring invoicing,
- Using open source blockchain for maintaining customer ledgers.
- Integrated Google Pay, Paytm and Payment Gateways APIs to process transactions seamlessly.
- WhatsApp business APIs to send updates on collections and settlement to our customers.
- Developed our proprietary artificial intelligent based reminder engine to predict non-paying customers and send reminders to them.
- APIs Integration of few large banks to allow current account access to our customers from SpiderG app.
- Bharat bill Pay system APIs to allow customer to pay utility, phone bills etc using current accounts
- UPI APIs to enable seamless account transfers to our micro merchant customers.
How important do you think is it for people to rely on technology? Are there any major follies per se?
With changing market conditions, and tech penetration in everyday lives like digital payments, 4G network, affordable smartphone, and development of API driven tech infrastructure technology is more affordable, reliable and easy to use. Payment collection is the major issue for most of the micro-businesses, so why not use tech to solve this main problem. This is exactly what we are working towards with SpiderG, we want to empower micro-entrepreneurs to adopt technology in their businesses for their benefit. We want these small businesses like cable operators, newspaper vendors, internet service providers, milk vendors, newspaper vendors, PG owners, Tuition classes, Fitness centers – Yoga /Zumba/Karate classes, school bus operators, etc. to focus on business growth and automate their payment collection process. This would enable them to not waste time behind customers collecting payments manually and focus on other aspects of business.
Coming to the financial perspective, are you a bootstrapped venture? If not, kindly elucidate on the nature and amount of funding raised.
SpiderG has raised Rs 5.6 crore so far from Angels and Family funds, the likes of Mr. Rahul Kirloskar, Chairman at Kirloskar Pneumatic; Fusion Tech Ventures; Mr. Harshal Morde, Director, Morde Foods Pvt. Ltd and from various family offices.
What are your immediate and long-term milestones like?
We plan to raise approximately $ 3 to 5 funding in the coming months. Talking about Series A, we plan to raise about $ 15 million +. This money we plan to utilize for product enhancements, vernacular content engine development for inbound marketing, and creating an infrastructure for sales funnels.
