Business Travels a Delhi base Travel Agency was started by Mr. Rajiv Verma in the year 2010. Rajiv Verma is a first generation businessman and from the inception lack of working capital support constrained the growth of business.
In travel trade, travel agencies have to give credit to their corporate clients and their repayment duration varies from 15-45 days whereas agencies have to pay their vendors in 1-7 days. So, there was a need of financing to bridge this gap of 15-30 days. Mr. Verma had to give up on a lot of business due to non availability of working capital
Being a very young company, they were not able to get funding from Banks or any other financial institution. Also banks and NBFCs typically avoid lending to travel agents and if they do they insist on collateral. Being a first generation entrepreneur Mr. Verma did not have the ability to provide a collateral, there was no financial support from family or relatives. Due to these constraints the firm had to give up on a lot of business and at times had to borrow money from unorganized market at huge interest rate which was unsustainable for them.
Last year in the month of October, the firm’s top supplier Travel Boutique Online introduced then to Indifi. Indifi’s product was very unique and addressed the financing issue of travel agencies at very competitive interest rate and simple process with minimal documentation. Within 4 days of applying to Indifi the firm was sanctioned a purchase financing credit limit of Rs. 10 lacs and after using Indifi’s product, Business Travels was able to add more corporate clients. Their monthly sales have increased 100% in just 4 months. Their overall profit has also grown significantly.
Mr. Verma was very appreciative of the Indifi process, during the loan sanction process he was personally visited by the Relationship Manager and COO of Indifi and he was pleasantly surprised during the discussion to know how well Indifi had understood the pain points for Travel Agents and structured a product around the same.
Indifi’s product was a boon for Business travels. They are not only managing their working capital efficiently but also able to improve their services to customers as they are able to pay their vendors on time which is leading to better services and competitive prices from their vendors.
