Start Up

Empowering Treasury management

CM Grover, MD and CEO, IBSFINtech

Providing end-to-end digitisation and automation solutions, the TreasuryTech company aspires to be the most trusted IT solutions partner for Treasury, Risk & Trade Finance Management, across industries globally

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“Today, all the leading private and public sector banks are exploring bank connectivity and IBSFINtech, being the technology partner for the critical function of Treasury to the corporates, is playing a pivotal role in enabling the bank connectivity between the Corporates and the Banking system.”

CM Grover,
MD & CEO,
IBSFINtech

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The pandemic forced a tectonic shift across sectors over the last two years. Thanks to the rapid advancements in the field of deep-tech and digital technologies, despite standstill conditions, organizations prodded on.

Notwithstanding the surrounding gloom and severe despondency, the unthinkable happened! India managed to incubate over 2,250 startups in the year 2021, over 600 more than what was added in the previous year, according to a report by NASSCOM and Zinnov. The Indian startup ecosystem remained vibrant and dynamic, despite the pandemic. Although 2022 is projected to be a promising year, the lessons learned in the last two years will be pivotal for the startups, as they navigate through the new normal.

In a series of features on the Great Indian Startup ecosystem, we shall present exclusive interactions with the most promising, innovative startups, based on three key pillars of innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship.

As a first in a series, we present here the story of IBSFINtech, a home-grown enterprise TreasuryTech company providing end-to-end digitisation and automation solutions for the cash and liquidity, treasury, risk and trade finance management (TRTFM), and supply chain finance requirements of medium, large and very large corporates.

In an exclusive interview to SME Channels, CM Grover, MD & CEO, IBSFINtech, provides insights into his company’s mission, stress on innovation, differentiation technology, the innert drive, business-critical early traction, state of current revenue, ways to mitigate risks, and last but not the least, growth projections.

What is your company’s stated mission? What’s the background of your founders?  

IBSFINtech is a home-grown enterprise TreasuryTech company providing end-to-end digitisation and automation solutions for the cash and liquidity, treasury, risk and trade finance management (TRTFM), and supply chain finance requirements of medium, large and very large corporates. Since its inception in 2006, the company has successfully maintained its leadership position in the treasury management ecosystem.

As a TreasuryTech we aspire to become the most trusted IT solutions partner for Treasury, Risk & Trade Finance Management, across industries globally. In the next 2-3 years, our aim is to become one of the Top 3 players in the niche space in the global market.

As a “Make-In-India” company established by Ex-Bankers, IBSFINtech is based on a foundation of rich experience in banking, finance and treasury. The birth of the product emerged from the founders’ stint with leading public sector banks in India identifying a niche gap in the corporate treasury market in India.

What is your unique value proposition or competitive advantage?  

The competitive strength of our solution is the agility, speed to implementation and comprehension to cover the complete landscape of Corporate TreasuryTech.

Majority of the corporates, globally, are still dependent on spreadsheets for Treasury & Trade Finance Management. IBSFINtech’s platform replaces spreadsheets or manual processes for efficient management of critical Treasury, Risk & Trade Finance functions of the corporates.

IBSFINtech Platform uniquely differentiates in below parameters:

1.An End-to-End Comprehensive Solution

The platform covers the entire spectrum of Cashflow, Liquidity, Treasury, Risk, Trade Finance and Supply Chain Finance Management, as well as the peripheral areas, through the multiple modules offered in the product portfolio.

2. Specialised Trade Finance solution

Our key differentiator is our Trade Finance module, IBSFINtech portfolio includes a holistic offering to cater to the end-to-end Trade Finance operations of the corporate.

3. Bank Connectivity

Owing to the unique placement of our solution in the treasury ecosystem, IBSFINtech is rising as the unique player enabling seamless integration between the corporate’s ERP and the Bank’s Core Banking Solution.

4. Integration Capabilities (Inward & Outward)

IBSFINtech’s framework has proven capabilities of integrating with a corporate’s inward architecture as well as outward interfaces. All of our clients have opted for the same. This is a critical ask of the IT department to simplify the ecosystem of the corporate and to ensure the multiple elements in the ecosystem are not working in isolation.

5. Speed to Implementation

Having being implemented at some of the very large corporations of the country, IBSFINtech product has become highly mature and sophisticated to address the challenges of Corporate Treasury and Trade Finance function in whole. The best practices of the industry are inbuilt into the platform, which also ensures lesser customizations and more standardization of the product offering.

6. Product Developed from Ground-up, In-house Domain (Functional) & Technical Expertise

The entire product portfolio has been designed and developed by IBSFINtech from square one. The genesis of the product lies with the founders who are Ex-Bankers having 100+ years of cumulative experience in Treasury, Banking & IT. In addition to the Founders, the core team is highly experienced, motivated and passionate about this niche space.

7. Partner in Growth – Futuristic Technologies

IBSFINtech becomes the Partner in Growth as the TreasuryTech partner rather than limiting their relationship as just a vendor. With IBSFINtech, once the platform is selected for the digital transformation journey, the collaboration continues to support & facilitate the corporate until the same achieves automation across their Treasury, Risk, Trade Finance, Supply Chain finance & any ancillary functions.

As a product company, IBSFINtech is continuously investing in research and development in the new technologies, AI, ML, RPA to stay ahead of the curve vis-a-vis the competition. This also ensures the latest technology adoption is available in the platform for the benefit of the corporates.

8. Scalable Solution

IBSFINtech solution supports scalable treasury operations. The product is highly modular and parametrized along with being highly configurable and adapting to the workflow of the corporates. The enterprises stand to benefit because they can select and implement the overall solution in phases or module-wise as they grow and require subsequent modules.

What positive early traction has your company achieved? 

While being a pioneer in pre-empting, the wave of coining the term ‘FinTech’ to financial technological companies, IBSFINtech has been spearheading ahead of time.

Initial few years of the company were dedicated to product development and raising awareness in the market while building the need for a robust and intelligent decision support system for the CxOs.

In 2013, IBSFINtech formally rolled out the product in the market with Beta launch of our FX Management Module and acquired India’s largest media house, Times of India (Bennett & Coleman Company Ltd – BCCL) as our client. BCCL selected IBSFINtech for implementing a robust Forex management solution, after evaluating other global service providers, as IBSFINtech proved to be the only solution provider which could cater to the requirements of the India’s Largest Media Publishing House.

Since then, we have been dedicated to driving the change in the mind-set of large industries in recognising the need for an intelligent decision support system for the critical functions of Cash flow, Treasury, Risk, Trade Finance and Supply Chain Finance. Today, the company has established a leadership position globally (consistently featured as the Top 10 player in the space of treasury & Trade Finance) covering the entire landscape of Cash & Liquidity, Risk, Treasury and Trade Finance Management space for the corporates.

What innovation do you bring into the marketplace? Does your brand have Differentiated Technology?  

The platform is a comprehensive solution, which is highly parameterized, configurable and designed with a modular approach. The innovative and intuitive design of the platform allows it to easily adapt to the workflows of the corporate and therefore enables high ease of implementation. The platform is master-based with parameter placeholders which can be defined based on the organization’s processes & workflows. User profiles are also defined during the implementation as per the organizational structure. All of this enhances the ease of platform by manifolds.

The platform is built on a robust and secure technology stack, keeping in mind the critical function of Treasury and Corporate Finance that it caters to.

Moreover, IBSFINtech is emerging as the integration layer between corporate’s ERP and Banks, enabling straight-thru processing. IBSFINtech has been the first mover in the Bank connectivity by enabling seamless processing of vendor bill discounting for a retail giant in 2018. Today, all the leading private and public sector banks are exploring bank connectivity and IBSFINtech, being the technology partner for the critical function of Treasury to the corporates, is playing a pivotal role in enabling the bank connectivity between the Corporates and the Banking system, thereby enabling a truly connected ecosystem.

Is your company still pre-revenue, or it is profitable? If the company is profitable, please let us know when did you break-even?

The need for digital transformation has multiplied post pandemic. We are experiencing positive traction from all quarters of the industries, in India and overseas. We are positive about achieving cash break-even by FY 22-23.

What is the biggest risk you face, and how do you plan to mitigate that risk? 

Over the years, IBSFINtech has been focused on establishing its credibility by building a strong foothold in the domestic market. Having penetrated the world’s toughest market, India, in the global perspective, we had been playing in the smaller league. While most of our competitors are globally established players in this niche space, we have won over against them with our product strength by acquiring some of the very large marquee corporations of the country. What we see as the risk is the muscle power available with the globally established players to put behind building a strong global market positioning, global branding, visibility and customer outreach. With the current plan to raise Series A/Growth fund, we will be expanding our presence globally and setting up global partnerships to expand our reach. This will help us mitigate the first risk.

The second risk that we have observed is talent retention. The segment that we cater to is highly domain intensive, requires functional know-how in addition to the technical knowledge and extensive hands-on experience. IBSFINtech has lucrative retention policy for the key resources to mitigate this risk.

What is your growth projection for FY 2022-2023?  

Closing the Financial Year 2021-22 on a positive note, we expect our growth in Financial Year 2022-23 to be close to 5X.

IBSFINtech is disrupting corporate treasury ecosystem and has established itself as leader in this space in India. With aspirations to be a global corporate TreasuryTech provider, IBSFINtech has experienced a phenomenal growth in the last few months.

Especially owing to the digital adoption wave led by the pandemic, the top management has mandated technology adoption in this niche making a critical function of corporate and the approach top-down.

The ask for digitization of corporate’s Treasury, Risk and Trade Finance has increased multifold and in the foresight we have expanded our product offerings in SaaS with InTReaX – SaaS TMS and VNDZY – Supply Chain Finance & Beyond. IBSFINtech continues to expand its footprint across the globe. On the product side we are continuously evolving our product suite with cutting edge technologies and new delivery models.

As part of our growth strategy, in continuation to retaining our leadership position in the country, we intend to set up our presence in US, Singapore, Dubai during this year to expand our foothold in these global regions.


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