Executive Summary 

In collaboration with a new-age financial technology company, GetVantage, we authored a market report highlighting the vast lending opportunity in India’s MSME and tech–led startups. The report highlighted credit challenges for these businesses and limitations of traditional lenders, creating a large whitespace for modern fintech to enter. 

About the Client 

The client, GetVantage, is a financial technology company that provides revenue-based financing as an alternative funding solution to small and medium-sized enterprises and startups. By offering a purpose-built SaaS solution of businesses with minimal technological infrastructure, the client was able to provide loans that were recovered on an automatic basis from the monthly revenue generated by the borrowing business. This allowed businesses to be relieved from the pressures of fixed monthly payouts while retaining equity in their respective business. 

The Strategic Imperative

India is home to more than 64 million MSMEs, many of which are traversing towards a digital-first operation, particularly the ones in the high-growth sectors such as E-commerce, SaaS, Travel, and F&B. This rapid digitisation is fuelling the business momentum to grow, however, access to growth capital becomes a significant roadblock.  

Traditional lenders are often hesitant to finance early-stage businesses as they lack long-term financial track records or adequate collateral. Hence, institutional credit remains largely out of reach for such businesses. While equity financing is available, it often comes at the cost of dilution of ownership, which is a concern for founders.  

Mapping how alternative financing steps into bridging this critical gap by offering timely, flexible, and founder-friendly capital. 

Redseer’s Strategic Engagement

• Market Assessment – Segmented the MSME landscape across key sectors primarily through a digitisation lens. This helped in sharpening the estimates to reflect a more realistic market size, comprising only enterprises above a certain level of digitisation as the true beneficiaries of the product 
• Supply Side Analysis – Mapped existing capital deployment models and estimated an unserved credit gap of $220B, with forecasts indicating a widening supply-demand mismatch over the next five years. This highlighted the growing opportunity in the SME credit space, provided lending conditions remain the same. 
• TG Deep Dive – Conducted interviews with founders across SaaS, F&B, E-commerce, and other digital-first sectors to uncover pain points in their borrowing journeys and unmet financial needs.  
• Impact of Public Interventions – Assessed the effectiveness of government schemes targeted towards the financial upliftment of MSMEs and the need for a collaborative solution through public-private partnerships
  

Outcomes & Impact 

• Uncovered a $500 Bn+ unserved credit white space across digital-ready SMEs, especially in F&B, SaaS, and eCommerce verticals, providing a clear scale lens for both product innovation and investor engagement. 
• Estimated additional $ 200 Bn GDP impact potential through the digitisation of SMEs. 
• Projected ~2x growth in alternative SME financing over the next five years, driven by product-market fit, superior disbursal speed, and founder-first repayment models. 
• Enabled sharper TAM definition by segmenting the MSME universe through digital maturity and funding-readiness

The high flexibility of repayments, collateral-free structure, and data-driven offering are strong levers for India’s emerging SMEs and e-commerce businesses to consider when thinking about fundraising for growth. 

-Bhavik Basa, Founder, GetVantage 

What This Means for the Industry 

The MSME sector contributes around 30% to the GDP, making it a very important part of Indian economics. The sector requires adequate support to bolster the growth of businesses that driving India’s positioning on the world stage today. Hence, the need for affordable, flexible, and prompt capital is very critical in this growth journey. This is where new lending and innovative lending products are required, and alternative financing has set the ball rolling. 

At Redseer, we bring years of expertise in the MSME and consumer internet space, supporting emerging businesses with data-backed and actionable strategies. Whether its shaping growth narratives, assessing market potential, or building investor confidence, we ensure that companies scale successfully. 

Connect With Us

We Solve Strategic Uncertainty – When market playbooks break down, we help rewrite the rules with data, depth, and decisiveness.