Ok Credit Business Model, Revenue & Case Study
About Ok Credit
India is turning digital in almost every industry starting from street vendors to big manufacturing businesses. Similarly, due to this huge market, many companies and start-ups are coming up with various digital payment applications and credit apps. Now, with so much technology and mobile phones, many people, users, and customers have now switched over to various digital platforms for various purposes.
On the other hand, the lending business is growing quite enormously. People are taking up credits from various digital lenders. One of the best digital lenders in the country is Ok Credit. Harsh Pokharna, Aditya Prasad, and Gaurav Kunwar are the founders of this amazing lending credit application.
Moreover, Ok Credit is a receivable platform especially targeting small businesses in the country. In fact, this application is the digital version of Bahi-Khata. Now, this means you can keep books of accounts digitally.
Ok Credit app is used to maintain financial transactions, money left, money received, and the account of one’s business. This app also sends a timely reminder to people who are yet to receive payments along with a link as well. The collections using this platform are quite faster as compared to any other such platforms that are available in the market.
Ok Credit Industry
Ok Credit as a company falls under the technology, information, and internet industry. The headquarters of this company is located in Bangalore, Karnataka and was founded back in 2017.
After the launch of this application, Ok Credit gave a complete makeover to the traditional register books that people used previously. It made the daily bookkeeping task simpler and highly effective for millions of small businesses across the country. One must know, this application not only helps small businesses to keep proper track of credit transactions but, it sends timely reminders, and makes it easier for people to collect the settled balance amounts very quickly and accurately.
Within four years of its operation in the Indian market, the application already attracted 5.5 million monthly active users. Other than that, this application also has 50 million+ downloads on PlayStore. According to some reports, during the festival period, credit given by merchants to customers had gone up by 23% as compared to the previous year's figures. Ok Credit’s company data shows that one million customers were added by active merchants.
Moreover, we can see a major growth in Ok Credit’s usage in the Indian market. Interestingly, the most significant growth was witnessed by retailers in school supplies and stationery. Additionally, the number of credit lines settled digitally also increased as compared to the last figures, showing the adoption of online payments in digital bookkeeping.
Ok Credit Founders and Team
There is always some reason and story to start a company. Ok Credit was started with a mission to help all the small businesses in the country to grow with simple software products. The introduction of Ok Credit helped lots of small businesses to give out credit loans easily and made the whole process a lot simpler and easier.
This beautifully-crafted company was launched by three IIT Kanpur Alumni: Gaurav Kumar, Aditya Prasad, and Harsh Pokharna. Gaurav Kumar is the CPO of the company, Aditya Prasad is the CTO of the company and Harsh Pokharna is the CEO of the company.
These three are the head, brain, and backbone of Ok Credit. Whatever Ok Credit has received today, the credit for it goes to these founders and their hard work.
Ok Credit- Startup Story
Now, we know who are the founders of this amazing application in the market. These three founders of Ok Credit know each other for quite a long time. All three founders met first time in 2010 at IIT Kanpur and were batchmates. After their graduation in 2014, all three friends came to Bangalore and watching the amazing start-up ecosystem they were fascinated. Initially, the CEO of the company had joined Flipkart and understood all the work process and culture and then he wanted to do something working from home.
This is how the CEO of the company came up with the idea to do something unique for small businesses in the country. They left their previous jobs and worked on multiple products and learnt a lot from them. Now, the idea for a lending application came when Aditya came to Harsh’s house and went to the nearest grocery shop to pay off their debts. He saw that they were standing in the shop for nearly 15 minutes to settle all the dues amount. After calculating all the remaining debts people simply do not believe and that is what happened with Harsh.
This is the major problem that many people faced in the market and he thought of solving it. On the other hand, he found out that the store owners who had lent products and in return is due to receive their payments faced even greater problems. After this, all three friends then started coming out with the solution design. These friends made the product and designed it and went to that grocery store owner. All the founders got a surprising response because they did not know how to use the product due to a lack of knowledge. This is where they re-designed their product so that users like them could be comfortable. So, this is how all the founders of this digital payment reminder application came out.
Ok Credit- Mission and Vision
The mission and vision of every company is to grow rapidly in the market and solve problems. Similarly, the mission and vision of Ok Credit are very straightforward and simple. Ever since the company or application was invented they have only focused to achieve their mission and vision.
The mission of Ok Credit is to help all the small-scale businesses in the country by using simple software products and digitally empowering them. It is because the founders of this software worked with only one person to come out with a solution. They tried to make this application as simple as possible so that even the people who couldn’t read or write English could understand how to use the application.
Simply we could say, Ok Credit is not targeting the people who already know how to use such applications instead, they are penetrating through rural areas or small towns.
The vision of any company is always longer and is future-oriented. Ok Credit’s vision is to bring the data dark merchants onto the digital platform. Now, doing this the application will not gain a customer base but, it will make life simpler and easier for the people who have a headache in maintaining the lending tabs of customers. We are hoping but the best for the Ok Credit application to achieve its mission and vision.
Ok Credit - Tagline and Logo
Tagline is something that attracts customers and talks something about the products sold by that particular company as well. Many businesses across the world believe that having a catchy and proper tagline can attract lots of customers. Moreover, if you are willing to keep a tagline make sure you have a proper tagline that talks about your product and is catchy so that customers can remember.
Now, the tagline of Ok Credit is ‘Simple, Paperless, Secure’. This tagline from Ok Credit perfectly suits the company. We all know how simple it is to use the Ok Credit application for any work purpose. On the other hand, you do not require any documents or paper to use the application and need not worry about your data as it will be highly safe and easy to use. Once you have saved the data it will not erase until you have deleted yourself or have cleared the dues.
The logo of this company is very simple to understand. A ‘C’ like structure is made with white ink and in the background, the colour used is green.
Ok Credit - Business Model
One would not believe but, Ok Credit does not have a business model. This is because the company does not charge a single penny for its software usage from customers. The idea of the founder of this company is not to charge a single rupee for using the software that they have made. Their aim is to help expand small businesses in the Indian market successfully.
The company only wants this software to be used by as many users as possible. Harsh thinks that whenever he will start charging money or subscription from users then they will not have any interest to use their platform. He also believes that this software has not come to the stage where they could charge money.
His belief is to add new features to the software and help small businesses to expand and for which they would love to spend some money on the application. His business model would be related to that only. The better unique features he can offer the better charges he will take from the users.
Ok Credit - Revenue Model
We all know Ok Credit does not charge a single rupee for their software usage. People who are willing to use the software can use it for free without spending any money. This proves to be their primary product, the company do not have a revenue model.
The money that was raised by all the founders of the application is what they used to create the software and other materials. In future, if the company is planning to add new exclusive paid features then that will be how the company will earn revenue. We are hoping that such things will be started quite soon.
Ok Credit - Funding
We have learnt that, Ok Credit do not have a proper business and revenue model as their source of income. But, this does not mean they have received no funding from other companies in the funding series.
Ok Credit has seven investors who have funded their software or company. The total funding amount received by this company is $84.2 million. The company has raised funds in Series A, Series B, and Seed Rounds.
Ok Credit - Growth
Ok Credit has not been struggling to grow even after spending some years in the market. The company has been backed by both Lightspeed and Tiger Global but, the growth is quite slow. In fact, this company has not been able to clock significant revenues.
Interestingly, Ok Credit’s operating income grew by 10x in the FY2022 March. But, this growth did not give the result in absolute numbers with the company not even crossing Rs 50 lakh mark in the Indian market.
The revenue of operations of this company grew to Rs 36 lakh during its FY20 close to Rs 4 lakh in FY21. But, we are sure this is not what the founders are expecting from their software. Ok Credit has earned more from interest and gain on current investments and some other non-operating revenue with Rs 1.93 crore. But, this is not the growth we and the company owners are expecting.
Ok Credit- Online and Social Media Presence
Ok Credit’s all online presents are given below:-
- Website- Best Digital Bahi Khata & Ledger App | OkCredit
- Instagram- OkCredit (@okcreditofc) • Instagram photos and videos
- FaceBook- OkCredit | Facebook
- Twitter- OkCredit (@_okcredit) / Twitter
- LinkedIn- (20) OkCredit: Overview | LinkedIn
- YouTube- OkCredit - YouTube
Ok Credit- Advertisements and Social Media Campaigns
According to the CEO, they have not spent any on rigorous advertisements. The company only worked on some advertisements like word of mouth, goodwill, rumors, and many such things.
Ok Credit did not spend any rupee on television advertisements but, they did advertise on their social media platforms. If you happen to visit its official YouTube channel or Instagram handle they have lots of advertisements on various products and services being launched.
But, this does not mean Ok Credit did not conduct other advertisements. They conducted lots of social media campaigns. They posted advertisements on random business WhatsApp groups, FaceBook business groups, and many more. During the initial stages, the founders of Ok Credit used to visit various grocery stores, business places, and retail places to share knowledge related to their application. They did this because the application was not made available on PlayStore.
Ok Credit - Competitors
Here are some of the competitors of Ok Credit:-
- 1K Kirana Bazaar
- Vyapar
- Flobiz
- Khatabook
- Tally Solutions
Ok Credit- Future Plans
The future plans of Ok Credit highly depend on its revenue generation and funds received. It has always been a futuristic company or brand as compared to any other such companies in the market. This is one of the reasons why investors were so interested in investing in their company.
Now, the future plan of Ok Credit is to offer some unique and exclusive features for money gathering. Yes, offering such benefits will not be for free and they will surely be charging some amount of subscription fees from the users willing to use those features. But, one can be rest assured that, this company will not charge any fees for the usage of its software in the coming future.