Account Payables & Receivables: Challenges for Traditional Businesses
EnKash - The Ultimate Platform for Businesses
The Ultimate Platform for Businesses
This week’s newsletter is an insightful conversation between our Co-founder, Hemant Vishnoi and Kanishka Mohan , Partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants . This fireside chat was witnessed at the FinTech Festival India 2025 organised by Constellar India on 17th May.? A half an hour discussion touched upon some of the important points, such as cash flow challenges faced by traditional businesses, inefficiencies in the Account Payables (AP) & Account Receivables (AR) side, and the need for mid-market businesses to have automation for their payables and receivables.???
Are you eager to know the in-depth discussion that took place?? Let’s take us through the Q&A.?
Kanishka Mohan - Working capital has been a problem ever since businesses started. Can you please share how EnKash is trying to solve this problem with its approach, which is opposed to cash??
Hemant Vishnoi - The simple answer to this problem or challenge businesses face is due to the inefficiencies on the Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR) side.
If you look at any business, the challenge starts from the day they onboard any vendor or buyer. The manual process of collecting KYC details, to an entry into their accounting software or spreadsheets to moving toward their Purchase Order or invoice management. This again is followed by a manual activity where the finance team has to take approvals from various departments Then it comes to payment processing, followed by writing entries into accounting software and banking portal.
The whole process is concluded by reporting and reconciliation. There is a need for a seamless process. Any loopholes can lead to a chaotic situation. It is important to understand that someone’s collection is another person’s payable.
If you think of it, inefficiency in the collection process will impact the business's Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). This is where you realise that money is stuck in the entire value chain. It’s not that businesses don’t have money; they are just waiting for that money to come in. Now that we have a defined problem statement in front of us, there’s a solution to it that EnKash is trying to establish.?
If the credit is provided on the transactions or cash flow, most of the challenges can be mitigated for access to the capital. It’s a short-duration credit that any typical business will require to manage their day-to-day affairs. And that is where EnKash plays an important role.
Kanishka Mohan - Why is operational efficiency a better solution for businesses than just taking a simple loan where most currently existing solutions operate?
Hemant Vishnoi - The inefficiencies in one business system creates a ripple effect on multiple other businesses. If there are challenges on the AP or AR side processes, eventually, someone's money gets stuck in the value chain. These inefficiencies from the entire value chain have to be mitigated. I am not dismissing the need for credit. It could be required for reinvestment, but businesses should not require credit because of these inefficiencies.?
EnKash, as a platform, intends to solve both sides of the challenges for the businesses by building operational efficiency for them on the AP and AR automation side and, simultaneously, by providing them with the right amount of credit for short durations.
Kanishka Mohan- How is the user experience for the client and the vendor?
Hemant Vishnoi- As far as the user experience is concerned, it's a platform approach. EnKash provides a software layer to the customer without disrupting their internal policies, processes, and systems. We seamlessly integrate our platform with their existing systems.
If we look at any mid-market, it usually operates with three to four software, and one of the important ones is accounting. The banking portal is the second most important.?
On the other hand, EnKash adapts to the existing systems and helps customise the workflows seamlessly. We don’t ask them to leave their accounting software or banking relationship.? Instead, we come in between as an experience layer by providing our platform.
Kanishka Mohan - EnKash is geared towards mid-market players. How do their problem statements differ from players who are larger than them? For example, corporates or very small players who may not be digitally savvy.
Hemant Vishnoi - Different challenges exist in small, medium, and large segments. The micros which are working in the retail business face different sets of challenges. We have seen innovations in the Kirana Tech side, which is a massive opportunity, but these micro-segment customers need to have software with them. That is where players like neo-banks are trying to build for them. A tectonic shift has started in that direction.
When we talk about large corporates, they work with banks, where technology has been provided, and ERP software is deeply integrated into their banking accounts and other processes.
This is where the mid-market faces challenges as they are neither in the micro category nor in small. They have certain software and processes to work on the spreadsheets. They have siloed software for vendor payments, expense management, payment instrument, payment processing, and collections, and they are the ones who require a one-stop solution.
They need an integrated layer amongst all their software that can provide them a holistic and 360-degree solution for their AP and AR side, and that is where we come into play. We are here to provide them with an experience layer without changing anything.
Kanishka Mohan - Let’s talk about EnKash and its future projects. What are different products on the roadmap, which are recently launched or which are in the pipeline?
Hemant Vishnoi - EnKash has been a pioneer and category creator in the spend management space. Most people think that it's just another expense management product.?
However, that is not the case. We intend to provide a holistic solution with our platform approach, where we collate AP, AR, corporate cards and expense management. Ours is a one-stop platform where we intend to provide financial and non-financial products for the mid-market, which they lack due to accessibility.
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Kanishka Mohan - Tell us about your journey as an entrepreneur. Would love to know a few interesting anecdotes about the origin story of EnKash.
Hemant Vishnoi - The origin story started with a thought around consumer payments. I've been in the payments space for more than 20 years. I've seen it evolving, right from consumer behaviours to digital payments. But, not enough work is done on the B2B space side.?
It is more than a $500 billion market opportunity on the consumer conservative terms, and the idea came into being that why not disrupt the B2B payments space as well? We intend to provide a similar experience in B2B payments compared to what consumers or individuals like me are getting in the B2C space.
However, in the last four or five years, we have seen a lot of players joining hands in terms of bringing innovative solutions on the B2B payment side.?
When we started our journey, people were unaware of how this entire experience could pan out.?
We took on the challenge of explaining what we intend to do - to banks, the market, customers, and investors as well.
Over a while, people have started discussing this change required in this space. We feel good that we brought out this thought in the market through EnKash.
Kanishka Mohan- In concluding remarks, I would love to know a bit more about the regulatory aspect of FinTech because in the last year, there have been many interventions that have come out, and as a founder, you need to be technically aware before you step into this space, what's your take on this?
Hemant Vishnoi - Fintech is the toughest space as far as the startup ecosystem is concerned. And it is so because money is involved, and if we are talking about FinTech as a space, the most important skill required is this subject matter expertise; either you or your team should have it.?
The focus is always on understanding regulations, compliance, and risk management. Either you know it, or your team should be able to do it in and out.
We have seen, in the recent past, how companies have gone down or pivoted their business model. The reason was simple; some companies didn't understand regulators' typical concerns about customer data, customer privacy, customer pricing, and all.?
For any fintech founder, it’s necessary to be on the right side of compliance and not be anywhere around where there is a risk or concern to the customer.
We should be proud that our regulator is agile and futuristic. They come out with many policies and processes to clarify what is right and what is not.
And they will keep coming up with other policies and processes because this ecosystem has to be strengthened.?
Having said so, fintechs are the real innovators as far as these ecosystems are concerned. The only request to the regulators would be to provide fintech with a necessary framework.
If you take an analogy from the NBFC side, the regulators provided them with a framework, and they did very well in the ecosystem. Similarly, regulators can provide that kind of framework to fintech as well as they are too on the right side.
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