BackShopclues to disburse loans worth Rs5,000 crore to sellers
Shopclues will disburse Rs200 crore under its Capital Wings initiative ahead of this year's Diwali festival
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New Delhi: ShopClues (Clues Network Pvt. Ltd) on Tuesday said it plans to disburse ₹ 5,000 crore worth of loans to merchants selling on its platform under its financing initiative Capital Wings.
Of this, ₹ 200 crore will be disbursed ahead of this year's Diwali festival.
Shopclues launched Capital Wings last year and has partnered with lenders including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank Ltd, Capital Float, Indifi Technologies and FlexiLoans to facilitate these loans.
Under this initiative, sellers are offered working capital loans at low interest rates and customized solutions for repayment and prepayment of loans.
ShopClues claims to have half a million merchants on its platform selling 50 million products.
In the past one year, Capital Wings has disbursed ₹ 100 crore worth of loans to more than 1,200 merchants, ShopClues said in a note.
“As 80% of our merchants are from tier-II and tier-III cities, the core challenge for them was to arrange working capital for starting and scaling their online business. Capital Wings was launched with the intent of making working capital available for merchants with flexible equal monthly instalments options. Through the easy financing solutions on offer, merchants no longer need to worry about their cash flows. They can focus single-mindedly on their business and on driving sales. This initiative has already bolstered the business of 1,200 merchants so far, and in view of the upcoming festive season, we aim to enable more merchants with the requisite finance to meet the high demand," said Ganesh Balakrishnan, assistant vice-president, merchant services.
The company, which focuses on smaller towns and cities, last month launched advertisement platform AdZone for its merchants to help them promote products using native and custom ads.
With the peak festival approaching, ShopClues has further plans to strengthen its seller network and tie up with more finance partners.
ShopClues, which in January raised close to $100 million—largely from sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd of Singapore—claims to have 190 million monthly visitors. The other investors backing the company include Tiger Global Management Llc, Nexus Venture Partners and Helion Ventures.
Other e-commerce firms such as Snapdeal and Flipkart also offer seller financing programmes in partnership with banks and non-banking financial companies.
Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, which runs competitor e-commerce website Snapdeal, last year said it will disburse loans worth ₹ 1,000 crore by March to small and medium businesses listed on its platform under its seller financing platform Capital Assist.
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