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Jocata, a leading global digital lending transformation partner, joins SME Finance Forum

Jocata, a leading global digital lending transformation partner, joins SME Finance Forum
Washington D.C, July 18, 2024 – Jocata, a leading digital lending transformation partner has joined the SME Finance Forum as the global membership network’s latest member. The 300+ members/affiliates of the Forum are SME financing experts operating in 190 countries who share the common goal of expanding access to finance to small businesses worldwide through knowledge exchange and innovation.
 
“SME Finance Forum proudly welcomes India’s leading FinTech to our network. It is with great pleasure I welcome Jocata to SME Finance Forum which is in line with our strategy of onboarding leading solution providers in emerging markets for impact,” said Qamar Saleem, Head of SME Finance Forum.
 
Jocata, a subsidiary of BillDesk (IndiaIdeas, one of India’s largest payment solutions providers), is a digital transformation partner for 50+ financial institutions across India, ASEAN, and the Middle East. Jocata specializes in digital lending using credit automation, smart decision-making, and intelligent monitoring. Their low-code, modular and purpose-built platform powers enterprise lending programs in Retail, Agriculture and MSME/SMB segments for banks and Non- Banking Financial Institutions (NBFIs/NBFCs).
 
Jocata has been at the forefront of banking innovation and leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) to support its client partners to revolutionize customer experiences and drive MSME lending growth through efficient credit intelligence solutions. By harnessing cutting edge technology and analytics, they transform data into intelligence to push unserved and underserved customer segments into the credit funnel. In an industry first, the firm built an AI/ML powered behavioural score - SME DNA that provides deep understanding of an entity’s performance across business cycles, thereby highlighting any potential risks associated with the business. It empowers credit underwriters with enhanced 'Go-No-Go' decision within 2 minutes thus reducing the total Time-to-Credit (disbursal) for these borrowers from 2-5 days to less than 6 hours. Additionally, SME DNA empowers SMEs to grow their business with timely credit, build credit history and avail loans on more favourable terms to unlock their true potential. The score has been adopted by marquee lending institutions for their credit onboarding, assessment, and monitoring decisions.

With their deep expertise in the credit ecosystem, Jocata launched India’s first MSME Economic Activity Index - Jocata Sumpoorn in association with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Principal Financial Institution for promotion, financing and development of Indian MSMEs, in November 2023. Sumpoorn was presented at Citizen Stack - the first United Nations Conference on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) at the UN headquarters in New York in April 2024. The Index was showcased as a unique public-private partnership between a fintech that brings innovation to the table and the public sector that brings scale - a shared value good between the financial ecosystem and the MSME ecosystem.

 
“As we embark on this journey with the SME Finance Forum, we look forward to engaging with its global membership network that brings together financial institutions, technology companies, and development finance institutions to share knowledge, spur innovation, and promote the growth of SMEs. As a deep tech company that has served in the digital lending and analytics space for over a decade, we have engaged with lending institutions in powering near-instant credit decisioning and faster disbursals to SMEs. Taking our endeavours a step further, in partnership with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), we launched Jocata Sumpoorn - India’s first MSME Economic Activity Index, as a way for us to give back to the financial and SME ecosystem and continue to innovate for all our stakeholders. We are heartened by the opportunity to present our work and the index at the first United Nations Conference on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the growing readership of the index and insights. By joining SME Finance Forum, we wish to discover potential partnerships, build synergies, and engage with like-minded leaders to drive economic inclusion of SMEs globally.” said Mr. Prashant Muddu, MD & CEO of Jocata Financial Advisory & Technology Services Pvt Ltd.
 
SME Finance Forum: Innovation & Partnership for MSMEs Growth
The SME Finance Forum, backed by G20 and IFC/World Bank, is the leading global network of 300+ members/affiliates operating in 190 countries. Network comprises of SME focused institutions providing and enabling finance and services- banks, non-banks financial institutions, fintech, payment platforms, development institutions, credit guarantee companies, insurers, investment funds, supply chain linked players, banking and SME associations, policy advocates, regulators, academia, consulting houses, knowledge aggregators. Our member, affiliates, and associated stakeholders benefit from learning/replicating best practices from across the world, innovating new products for business growth, acquiring risk mitigation tools, establishing partnerships, attracting investors, and being recognized amongst a peer group of global innovators. Our products consist of “members only” solutions (like innovation hubs, solutions clinics, peer group networks, study tours, specialized tools and trainings, member portal repository, partnered initiatives) as well as public good services (200+ publications library, 500+ videos, webinars, newsletters, trainings, annual awards, annual event etc.)
 
Jocata Financial Advisory & Technology Services Pvt Ltd
Jocata (a subsidiary of BillDesk) is a leading digital transformation partner for the BFSI industry, enabling 50+ large financial institutions to be future ready by using modular and scalable best in class technology. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in India, Jocata specializes in digital lending using credit automation, smart decisioning and intelligent monitoring. The purpose-built platform from Jocata powers enterprise lending programs for large banks and NBFCs. The highly configurable and low-code platform also operates in a SaaS model to enable analytics driven lending and embedded finance models for lenders, fintechs, neobanks, and marketplaces.
With our deep expertise in the credit ecosystem, we built proprietary Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) based scoring models to assess MSME and Retail borrowers (Individuals, Self-employed Professionals and Non-professionals) with ‘SME DNA’ and ‘Retail Persona Score’ respectively. We empower financial institutions with deep behavioural and predictive analytics for better underwriting decisions and the overall creation and maintenance of a data-oriented credit policy framework.
In an industry first, Jocata launched India’s first MSME Economic Activity Index - Jocata Sumpoorn in association with SIDBI. Addressing a crucial data-gap in the MSME space, this MSME-specific high-frequency indicator is developed using actual monthly sales data (consent-enabled and anonymized) of credit-seeking MSMEs. It aims to empower financial institutions, policymakers, and economists to strategize credit flow and create tailored policies for the sustainable growth of Indian MSMEs.
 
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