The Indian Unicorn Club – Latest 2021 Entrants – OfBusiness – A New Age FinTech Startup In India Providing Smart Financing to SMEs

Gurgaon based B2B startup OfBusiness has achieved Unicorn status after its latest round of investments. The B2B firm is valued at close to $1.5 billion, making it the 18th Indian startup to transform into a unicorn in 2021.

OfBusiness -About The Company

Ofb Tech, aka OfBusiness, is a B2B procurement and credit support platform that leverages tech to help businesses fulfill their raw material procurement and credit needs. It was founded in 2015 by the group consisting of Asish Mohapatra, Bhuvan Gupta, Nitin Jain, Ruchi Kalra, and Vasant Sridhar. The company provides SMEs with a full-stack digitized platform for all their commercial and financing needs. OfBusiness focuses particularly on primary, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, utilizing tech to assists many businesses in agriculture and production to procure raw materials necessary for their operations. Apart from B2B supply chain operations, it also provides management and infrastructure and manufacturing services for various consumption and capital goods-producing services.

The Platform

The tech-enabled platform assists SMEs in the production, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors to procure raw materials and credit. The integrated tech helps businesses to gain better products at more competitive prices while ensuring that the purchases are scheduled properly and clients are provided with the necessary online and offline support.

The firm helps SMEs obtain materials including metals, chemicals, polymers, agricultural commodities like fertilizers, building materials and others. On the credit assistance end, OfBusiness provides SMEs access to cash flow-based financing for buying raw materials through its NBFC ‘Oxyzo Financial Services’. The Company also offers a host of tech services for SMEs including BidAssist for new growth opportunities.

What Makes Them Different?

As a pioneer in bringing commerce and financing under the same umbrella, OfBusiness follows its unique way of doing business. Their business is built on three different pillars, namely Commerce, Financing and Digital Services. They also adopt a people-first approach, allowing employees to get their Esop exits in regular interval funding rounds. 

This has also set them apart from other Unicorns as an already profitable business. Both commerce and finance are difficult enterprises in themselves, and doing them both in tandem is a different realm of challenge. The company is also unique in its lack of mainstream popularity and a team mostly consisting of freshers. Their success despite their lack of effort in marketing themselves and veterans on board showcases their sustainability and future potential.

Growth And Investments

The inception of the company was faced with many challenges, with many investors doubtful of the business model and its future. Today, both the Commerce and Financing aspects of the company have grown to a profitable level, with the former posting $275 Million in revenue during FY21, and the latter amassing a loan book worth $192 million in the same. 

The first investors were Matrix Partners India, who had worked with co-founder Ashish Mohapatra during his days as a venture capitalist. Since then, the firm has conducted 8 funding rounds, gathering just over $353 Million in investments. Their latest funding was from their Series E rounds led by SoftBank Vision Fund. Along with SoftBank and Matrix, they are also backed by Falcon Edge Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Alpha Wave Incubation and others. 

The Verdict

As a pioneer in a unique spot tackling two major sectors as once, OfBusiness has already demonstrated its sustainable success model by turning profits at such a young stage. With the latest Unicorn Tag and the outpouring of investment, the company is set to disrupt India’s primary and secondary sectors at an unprecedented level.

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