Flipkart facilitates loan for its sellers

E-commerce major Flipkart today announced that sellers on its platform will now be able to get loans at competitive interest rates from NBFCs and banks within just 48 hours. Flipkart sellers can avail loans up to ₹3 crore, at an interest rate of 9.5% for a period upto 12 months.

Revamping its seller financing program ‘Growth Capital’ to empower MSMEs, Flipkart’s move will benefit more than 1 lakh sellers on the platform. Flipkart has partnered with 10 lenders as part of the program.

MSME sellers need to go through a minimal documentation process for getting the loan. Financial partners for the program include State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, Aditya Birla Finance, Tata Capital, Flexiloans, Small Industries Development Bank of India, LendingKart, Indifi and Happy Loans.

The sellers most benefited by the program are small scale and a majority of the loans are used to meet working capital requirements and demand spikes, the e-tailer said in a statement. The average loan size is ₹7 lakh, but sellers can avail loans up to ₹3 crores, at interest rates as low as 9.5%. The tenure on term loan and credit line options is upto 12 months.

Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said the program will help sellers scale their businesses. “This is part of Flipkart’s core mission of developing shared value in the ecosystem and helping digitise India through the latest tech and innovations,” he said in a statement.

Ranjith Boyanapalli, head of Fintech and Payments Group, Flipkart said the key aim of the fintech arm of Flipkart is to use technology to power financial inclusion within the country.

“The ‘Growth Capital’ program will help us reach a traditionally underserved market and make financial services more accessible to all. Through this, the seller community on Flipkart will be able to transform their businesses and realise their growth aspirations. It is a natural progression of our Fintech journey to reach out to the seller community and empower them with easily accessible low-interest financing options,” he said.

To ensure a speedy and hassle-free service, Flipkart has also built an end-to-end API integration, from application to disbursal, with its lending partners to provide a complete digital loan application experience for the sellers. They can access and monitor their loans directly through the company’s seller portal. Flipkart’s in-house technology analyzes seller performance metrics for lenders to enable real time credit offers.