Simplifying Access To Funds Get Vantage intends to fund businesses from as little as INR5 lakhs to as much as INR 10 crores. The company wants to aggressively see brands take larger rounds of capital as well

GetVantage is the culmination of Bhavik Vasa's personal experiences and journey as an operator, and as a founder, over the last decade wherein the world witnessed the need for all forms of capital and growth capital to grow digital businesses or new-age businesses in India. Bhavik Vasa, founder and CEO, GetVantage, emphasises that GetVantage was not built out of an Eureka moment.

According to Vasa, India in the last decade saw commerce going online, the years of Amazon and Flipkart happening followed by mobility going digital with Uber and Ola. Demonetization in 2016 created another big shift and suddenly customers and consumers started transacting digitally. Having seen both these waves of change of behaviour over the last decade, it became clear to him that the trend of this decade and the decade ahead is going to be more and more consumption. The growth story of India comes from small businesses in emerging brands being able to reach their consumers directly; whether it's a product and e-commerce company, services business, media, healthtech or education. GetVantage is built with the passion to empower and enable all these small businesses coming online with access to capital, with access to growth, with access to support and services that help them grow, and fuel growth and consumption in the economy.

"We say this very strongly from day zero at GetVantage that we don't have a mission, we have a passion. It started from my little passion for saying that India's always been a small business and small business economy, with small entrepreneurs opening up small storefronts. That's what our parents, our grandparents, that's what we've grown up into. What's changing now is that the same small businesses are now going online or starting up online. Women entrepreneurs, women founders, husband and wife, and couples starting up an online brand, an online store across pet care, personal care, and cosmetics, and I think that's very empowering. The simple passion we have at GetVantage, which drives the company is how many small businesses and founders can we back in their journey to be an emerging brand of India? Can we back the next 10,000, the next 100,000 founders and businesses and brands in their journey to establish as an emerging brand of India? That's truly what GetVantage was founded on and continues to try to support and build for every day," said Vasa.

There are various traditional forms of funding and fundraising. Banks and bank loans have always been an option that businesses or small businesses can access but one has to provide profitability or provide collaterals, or as an entrepreneur, one has to give some personal guarantees and it does not work for a lot of emerging brands which are asset-light or digital in nature. The other option is to raise equity money, dilute and raise venture capital money. GetVantage is India's first fintech platform, tech-enabled and data-driven, that allows these small businesses to engage with the company as a platform in a complete digital experience, truly based on the venture's performance. Entrepreneurs can connect, and apply with GetVantage for an alternative form of capital that is based purely on how that brand and business has been performing over the last 6-12 months, how the brand's revenues have performed, what is the growth that that brand is seeing? And based on those parameters, the platform and the engine are able to define what capital GetVantage can give the business and what funding the company can give the entrepreneurs for the next 12-18 months to be able to grow.

GetVantage is India's first revenue-based financing and alternative investment platform. The first biggest challenge was building awareness for a new product, setting up or building any new category. The idea was called into question by interested entrepreneurs. Vasa's first step was building awareness and building trust for a new product type. The company launched in March 2020 and the arrival of Covid-19 sent the world down a spiral. As a result of the pandemic, businesses went online. GetVantage's TAM has gone up five times in the last two years. The company has funded and backed more than 350 brands and businesses across 19 categories.

The company closed and announced a $36 million growth round. This was a mix of both equity and credit lines and debt capital. GetVantage intends to fund businesses from as little as INR5 lakhs to as much as INR 10 crores. The company wants to aggressively see brands take larger rounds of capital as well. The company portfolio is witnessing a 60 to 65 per cent repeat. Providing capital for entrepreneurs is the first step, every business needs access to capital to grow. The company also provides entrepreneurs support with different partners for digital marketing, performance, marketing, and different tools for creating better efficiency for spending for marketing. Vasa intends to take the company into other emerging markets of Southeast Asia while diving deeper into the Indian markets. Approximately 25 per cent of the company's portfolio is B2B SaaS businesses that have secured their future contracts or their subscription or the user base. However, these companies need capital to increase their infrastructure spending.

"Equity is truly the most expensive form of capital because one has to accelerate and grow the business at any cost to give higher returns to equity investors. I tell all my founders and fellow founder that every round of capital that they raise, they should raise a hybrid round, raise a mix of equity and debt that helps them boost and grow," shares Vasa.

Vasa thinks that it is funding winter only by raising equity money. He believes businesses should be built on purely two factors is that a founder should see and understand in his journey what phase and at what time he needs what type of capital. Vasa believes there is a lot of capital and liquidity out there may it be equity or debt. He adds that a lot more cautious bets are being taken.