Fintech has transformed the finance industry, making it easier to deal with our investments, manage our savings, apply for credit and get quick loans. However, ‘security issue’ is a strong aftertaste that all fintech players aim to avoid. Skeps redefines the whole financial ecosystem by offering a frictionless financing experience to every customer by utilizing revolutionary blockchain technology and excellent data privacy and security feature.
Skeps’ products help merchants get Point-of-Sale financing options for their customers from a suit of lenders. Merchants can fetch approved loan offers from multiple lenders without sharing the customer’s personal information with any lender, resulting in a higher sales conversion and ultimately higher revenue. The products are built on the USP that nobody can access customer data except the merchant. The data reside inside the merchant’s infrastructure, and only the merchant (not even Skeps) has control over the data. A decentralized marketplace for loan leads, Skeps connects loan seekers (like merchants sourcing loans for their customers), to underwriters. This means better rates and increased access to credit for merchants’ customers and fewer declines for lenders.
Skeps’ solutions provide merchants with a dashboard that helps them evaluate leads, manage buyers, check metrics and history. This means that Skeps enables merchants to test the offers from the buyers for their customers by uploading customer data in a CSV file, choose with which buyers to share the leads with, check the history of evaluated leads with the buyer and their status, carry out an in-depth analysis of the leads in a given timeframe and get all the information related to a lead-current status, offers received, loan amount, the buyer with which the lead was shared, etc.
Lending Solutions Under One Roof
Meanwhile, lenders upload their credit decision model onto the Skeps dashboard installed on-premises)— it can only be uploaded by the designated model manager within the issuer, who is usually someone from the Risk team of the issuer. After uploading, they can select the merchant they wish to upload the model for and click “Deploy Model”. This uploads the credit model to the Skeps blockchain network for the selected merchant. Similarly, when a lender partner with Skeps, their underwriting model and customer data remain within their firewalls, and they get to choose partners on the network. Since lenders have full control over the platform/dashboard, they can easily customize their underwriting model on a real-time basis, rest assured that it is secure and private.
An entrepreneur, Mayank Tewari, started working on Skeps’ business idea in 2017, along with his trusted friend and co-founder, Prerit Srivastava. In 2018, their efforts yielded fruit, and their platform went live with real-time evaluation feature and assessed around 15K applications a day. Two months later, in December 2018, the team registered as Streamsource Technologies Inc. However, in 2019, the team adopted the brand name Skeps, under which the company is today known. Talking about the hard work behind the company, Mayank says that the efforts he took have taught him to keep a close watch on the execution while at the same time, not lose the big picture. “Over the last 2.5 years in the venture, I have solved all imaginable ranging from product, technology, organization structure, renting an office space, and figuring out where my team will park their cars! It has been an amazing journey so far, full of learning and re-learning things,” says Mayank Tewari, Co-founder, Skeps.
The Dream Team
Citing that the biggest challenge they faced early on was recruitment, the Skeps team today comprises talented individuals who share the passion for building something new. The seasoned professionals, conscientious coders, and ardent doers at Skeps are bound by a single, overarching mission: to enable simplified and secure financing for all. Mayank adds, “It is difficult to find great like-minded individuals to work with you on an idea that does not have legs yet. It takes a lot of courage to join a group of founders just on their belief in the idea. We continued to tap into our network to find folks who were bored with their comfortable jobs and had the hunger to build something. We were fortunate to find great folks early in our journey. Everybody in the room has the right to provide their opinions and discuss solutions without feeling the pressure of hierarchy. Everybody, including the founders, is open to feedback and comfortable with their idea being shot down.” This open culture has helped Skeps grow into a team of 25 capable and professional individuals today. This fun and accommodating work culture is also why Skeps was successful in facilitating funds worth $1 million within 15 days of processing loans, a rare achievement for a company celebrating its first birthday. Moreover, despite the pandemic, the company has witnessed a 9x growth in revenue over the last 12 months.
An innovative blockchain platform trying to transform the way loans are sourced globally, Skeps crossed the 5000 additional happy customers mark for its clients in November 2020. The company is currently working on building next-gen point-of-sale financing solution for retailers in the U.S. “Our innovative solution helps retailers convert more customers, thereby generate higher revenue. In the short term, we want to be the platform of choice wherever financing is required. In the long term, we wish to be the platform for any consumer lending happening across the globe!” concludes Mayank.