Triterras, global fintech company, and online grocery delivery platform Conektr have collaborated to provide working capital to support micro and small retailers.
Conektr’s B2B2C business design supports retailers’ digital transformation efforts and deliveries to customers across the country.
Its programme is a solution based on Triterras’ Invoice Bazaar platform, which helps business track inventory.
The collaboration seeks to help more than 7,000 small grocery and fast-moving consumer goods retailers seeking digital financing for improved inventory management.
“This collaboration is built on Conektr’s history with Invoice Bazaar, which, prior to its acquisition by Triterras, was the first institution to help us with our own working capital and whose services we continue to use for our procurement cycle,” said Madhusudhanan Jankarajan, founder and CEO of Conektr.
“We know first-hand that the availability of working capital can help small retailers maintain their inventory, leading to customer retention and business growth, so this is an important advancement for the ecosystem of micro and small retailers in the region.
“We expect 2,000 retailers to register upon launch with more to follow, highlighting the very real financing challenges micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises face running their businesses.”
The companies also intend to support small grocery retailers that are unable to secure bank credits and have to rely on owners’ equity or suppliers’ credit.
“Neighbourhood retailers globally have historically been unbanked for access to credit,” said Anand Nagaraj, executive vice president of business development at Triterras.
“Our collaboration with Conektr will help break this cycle through an easy-to-onboard, paperless process that is available to thousands of micro and small retailers on the Conektr platform that are in need of financing to help operate and grow their businesses.
“This collaboration is the latest step in our journey to provide cutting-edge lending solutions to underserved market segments, enabling their continued contributions to both local and global economies.”
Twenty-five thousand small-sized grocery stores are located across residential and commercial establishments in the UAE.
These retailers constitute a significant portion of purchases in the grocery and fast-moving consumer goods industries, said the companies.
The UAE’s food and grocery industry is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 9 per cent to value $40.47 billion by the end of 2025, according to Research & Markets.
Amid the pandemic in 2020, online ordering and delivery of groceries amounted to $1.1 billion, as per reports by RedSeeds Consulting.
