Tide, the UK’s leading SME-focused business financial platform, has onboarded 50,000 SMEs since its market entry in India in December 2022.
With a compliance first approach to its India market strategy, Tide has onboarded and issued RuPay Cards to all the member SMEs (customers) on its platform only after a video Know Your Customer (v-KYC). The Reserve Bank of India mandated compliances will aid in preventing unauthorised users from accessing the platform and prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the platform. The process in turn supports the inclusion of SMEs in the formal economy, deepens the penetration of Digital India initiatives, and boosts credit access for the underserved segments. Tide has also issued 50,000 fully KYC RuPay cards for its members.
With the quick platform adoption and the market potential in India, Tide is confident that 10 lakh SMEs will join its platform and benefit from its digital business banking suite by the end of the year 2024. Tide also crossed 2.25 lakh app downloads on Google Playstore in March, since its launch.
The company’s current member-base in India reveals GenZ and millennials display a strong entrepreneurial drive with 90% members in the sub-40 age group.
Early adoption of Tide’s business banking services is being seen across Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Rajasthan. The platform is garnering adoption from small Mom & Pop shops, small Restaurants and solopreneurs like Actors, Bakers, Beauticians, Doctors, Physiotherapist, Teachers, Business Coaches, Insurance Brokers, Accounting & Tax professionals.
Gurjodhpal Singh, CEO, Tide (India) said, “Tide believes that the success of a financial platform lies in being agile and compliant at the same time. While we are on track to achieve our target to onboard 10 lakh SMEs by the end of 2024, we are not losing sight of compliance at any point during this journey. Tide onboards small business owners only after a full-KYC process involving facial recognition, automated data extraction, and machine learning techniques. This real-time approach ensures that we comply with all the guidelines and requirements established by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).”
Tide has also launched a new two-way communication campaign ‘We Are Listening’, to give members an opportunity to voice their opinions, concerns, share feedback and inspire brand decisions in due course.
“As Tide scales in India, we will expand our product offering for entrepreneurs to manage their finances seamlessly, and that can only happen with active involvement of our members. One of Tide’s core values being #memberfirst, the ‘We are listening’ campaign welcomes existing and future Tide members to come forward and suggest improvements to the app. We will incorporate their suggestions to enrich the platform and continue to offer a robust product to existing and new members,” he added.
With 9% of the SME market share in the UK, Tide is aiming to expand its presence in the Indian SME ecosystem across Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities. In the coming months the fintech is set to launch a suite of tailored products including a business savings/current account in partnership with a bank, QR code for payments, bank transfers, invoicing, GST, pay by link, and credit services.