Udaan lends to 100K merchants on its own since November 2018 

Credit is a route that startups across all segments are leveraging to scale up and expand. Be it B2B, B2C, fintech, logistics, or any startup that sees utility for credit in its business.

Following the same logic, fastest B2B unicorn till date Udaan, has secured a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) license in November 2018, to be able to disburse loans to its retailers and sellers.

The company had been trying hard to secure a NBFC license since it started seeing lending as a core revenue model. Till November, it used to lend via arrangements with third-party NBFCs.

The move has and shall continue to help Udaan in expanding its base to smaller cities and towns where retailers find it difficult to connect with large manufacturers, logistics reach and cash flow credits.

Hiveloop Capital, the NBFC entity of Udaan, since scoring the licence, has disbursed loans to more than 1 lakh businesses and the cheque sizes varying between Rs 10,000 to Rs 2 lakh, reports ET.

With this, the startup included credit in its a slew of services like sales and distribution, marketing, logistics, and software-related services to both manufacturers and retailers. Implying, the company provides end-to-end trading solutions starting from a marketplace, to payment, finance and customer services.

The aim here was to build a transparent platform for trading for all the parties involved, diminish the role of middlemen - wholesalers that might not have a network present all of the country - to expand the variety of choices available to both manufacturers and sellers while trying to buy or sell respective products.

And to do so, Udaan offers low commission fees and subsidies on logistics services.

Industry sources indicate that $130-150 million sales take place in the B2B segment on a monthly basis estimating on a data-based till May this year, and only a few players have been as successful as Udaan in tapping this segment.