Decentro founder and CEO Rohit Taneja
Indian fintech infrastructure platform Decentro expanded into Southeast Asia in March 2023 by launching its Ledgers module in Singapore. With Asia-Pacific being a hotbed for digital banking solutions. Decentro aims to double its regional business growth by the end of 2024, tapping into the substantial market demand for new-age financial solutions.
In this interview with e27, Decentro’s founder discusses the company’s products, plans in Southeast Asia, and upcoming funding round.
Excerpts:
What are the key features and functionalities of Decentro’s products, Flow and Fabric, and how do they help businesses streamline their financial operations?
Decentro’s Flow product consists of a variety of modules ranging from:
UPI (an instant payment system in India) and bank-to-bank collections: Static QR capability, combined with collections like collect request, intent flow, QR and payment link across India and 12-plus large currencies across the globe.
Recurring payments: eNACH (a method of electronically collecting payments from a customer’s bank account) and UPI autopay capabilities with configurable frequencies and amounts.
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Instant and global payouts: Instant payouts are compatible with UPI, IMPS, NEFT, RTGS, SWIFT, ACH and more protocols, with 5-plus supporting bank integrations in the backend.
Multi-currency escrow accounts: A multi-bank escrow facility is available for secure & simple money flow across India & globally.
Our Fabric product is the plug-and-play onboarding and validation module for consumers and businesses. It helps companies verify individuals and businesses by fetching and verifying data from government sources like the CKYC repository, UIDAI, Digilocker, etc.
Could you provide more insight into Decentro’s journey since its founding in 2020?
Over the past three years, Decentro has empowered fintech players across varied sectors, including banks, consumer platforms, non-banking financial firms (NBFCs), loan service providers (LSPs), B2C & B2B commerce, and neobanks. We now have over six live bank partners and five NBFC partners.
Since the launch, we have signed up 800-plus companies (mid and large-sized), and our ARR has grown 5-8x annually. Our client base has contributed to a US$3 billion annual payment volume processed through our platform.
We grew by 30x in monthly API transactions and 4x in live customers in FY 2023-24.
Can you discuss the significance of Decentro’s recent launch of the ledgers module and its strategic expansion into Singapore, particularly in enhancing customer loyalty programmes for brands like OwnDays?
Our Ledgers module is specifically designed to streamline financial operations, such as managing transactions and balances more efficiently, which is crucial for brands focusing on customer loyalty programmes.
It offers the following features:
Real-time reconciliation: The Ledgers API offers real-time reconciliation, keeping financial data current, especially crucial for high-volume transactions.
Data tallying: Automation minimises human errors in data entry and cross-referencing, enhancing record accuracy in a large organisation.
Customisable records system: Our Ledgers module is versatile and caters to multiple use cases, including loyalty programme management, general ledger maintenance, reward points reconciliation, and multi-currency treasury management.
What opportunities and challenges do you foresee in enhancing customer engagement strategies through fintech solutions, especially in the retail sector across Asia Pacific?
The new-age use cases and companies need cloud-first and scalable tech solutions that cater to their end-to-end needs. The offerings at Decentro should cater to precisely that while keeping empathy toward our customers (companies) in mind.
By introducing full-stack experiences in addition to our existing offerings, we have taken a step closer to being the one-stop shop for all your payments and banking needs.
We also recognise the need for these solutions to be easy to deploy and consume, so we need to iterate our product catalogue to make it more developer-friendly continuously. We are deploying SDKs and ready-made UI solutions over the existing easy-to-use, plug-and-play APIs, making it 2X simpler for companies to integrate and go live.
We understand the need for transparency and support in our domain, and hence, we have dedicated support teams that handle upcoming fixes, underlying iterations, and automatic updates without breaking flow. Finally, operating in regulated markets, our offerings should follow the highest degree of compliance, taking a solid compliance load off our customers’ shoulders.
How does Decentro leverage its strategic partnerships and technological expertise to bolster its presence in India, Singapore, and other pivotal regions?
Decentro’s approach centres on collaborating with local and international financial institutions, such as banks and lenders, which enhances our platform’s capabilities and expands our reach.
On the technology side, our focus is on:
Increasing our ability to scale & helping our customers scale. Currently, we can process around 120 transactions per second without the need to touch anything in our infrastructure.
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Handling and supporting new payment protocols evolving across the regions and countries in APAC. For example, UPI for cross border/UPI locally and in other countries.
Simplifying the APIs that we have to plug & play SDKs and UI kits so that our customers can integrate and go live in a matter of days/hours instead of 1-2 weeks.
Furthermore, we actively engage with local regulatory bodies to ensure full compliance and foster user trust. This regulatory alignment is crucial for smooth operations and expansion in international markets.
How much capital has the company raised so far? Do you plan to raise additional capital soon?
Decentro has raised US$6.3 million from investors, including YCombinator, Uncorrelated Ventures, Rapyd, Soma Capital, Plug and Play, and angel investors such as Kunal Shah and Beerud Sheth.
We will plan to raise additional capital shortly. This next round of funding will be aimed at accelerating our growth with investments across business, marketing, and engineering.
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The post How fintech infra firm Decentro leverages collaborations to capture SEA market appeared first on e27.