The Business Secrets Held in India’s Nutella Jars
Small retailers in India have always been neglected by banks. Standard Chartered is taking a granular approach to helping them get credit.
Big data out of little shops.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergA case of Dove bars, a couple of dozen Lay’s packets, six jars of Nutella. To the owner of a tiny mom-and-pop store, these may just be the humdrum weekly sales figures for soap, chips and bread spread. But to Solv, a business-to-business marketplace for India’s 60 million-plus small companies, they’re all crucial pieces of a gigantic banking jigsaw.
Ninety percent of the country’s trade passes through neighborhood “kirana” shops, each with annual sales of $0.5 million or less. Their owners mostly operate without business registration and lack access to the formal banking system. “They may not have a credit bureau score, or have only a poor score,” says Amit Bansal, chief executive officer of Solv. “Traditional banks don’t have a method to measure their ability to pay.”