Chqbook launches digital ledger, lending, insurance services for small merchants

BENGALURU: Chqbook, a fintech startup focused on small business owners such as kiranas, merchants and chemists, has launched a suite of services, including current account for daily transactions, short to long-term business loans and insurance products on its platform.

The Gurugram-based startup will provide these features on its new mobile app which will target a market thatcurrently has over 60 million small business owners with a smartphone.

Many of these small mom-and-pop business owners currently depend on manual ledgers to record daily transactions, and some do not even own a bank account, without a which access to credit is almost impossible.

Chqbook said it plans to address this gap by opening current accounts and providing financial products such as insurance and credit access to help bring small business owners to the formal economy.

The fintech startup has launched a free online book keeping feature called 'Chqbook Khata' which will help small business owners manage supplies and orders with ease, all in one place. With this launch Chqbook enters a growing number of startups in the online ledger space including Tiger Global-backed OkCredit, and Seqouia-backed Khatabook.

With the launch today of its new mobile app, Chqbook plans to scale to over 50 cities and expects to increase its customer base by 1 million during this financial year. The three-year-old start-up already has over 300,000 customers across the top 25 cities and on-boards over 25,000 customers on its platform every month for various products and services catering to small business owners.

“Chqbook’s mobile app brings together all the financial transactions a small business owner must handle, now available on demand and at their fingertips. Our ‘financial control center’ aggregates a simple to use current account, traditional khata transactions, lending, and insurance. It brings all daily transactions in one place making them easy to access, so that small business owners can focus on what they do best — running and growing their businesses,” Vipul Sharma, founder, and chief executive, Chqbook said in a statement.

Founded in 2017 by Vipul Sharma, Rajat Kumar, Sachin Arora, and Mohit Goel, Chqbook’s Tethecompany has raised funding from marquee investors including Aavishkaar Capital, Harsha Bhogle, Bharat Shyam, Ken Glass, and other individual investors.