Beaming with success

From distributing Coca Cola bottles to developing software for banks like Standard Chartered, Anand Shrivastav has tried out a handful of careers. And yet, this Harvard University graduate left all perks of being a salaried employee, when he started Suvidha — a micro-payment venture for the unbanked masses. The company, born in 2002, has been handling transactions over Rs 1,200 crore annually by providing cash management services to leading multinational and Indian banks.

Shrivastav’s breakthrough came in 2007 when he put together his own software that could enable micro-payments through mobile phones. The thought was simple, says Shrivastav, “I wanted to take the easy access to money transfers to people who have never even had a bank account.” So how did he manage? Suvidha’s strategy was to launch a cash-card called Beam card. This was essentially a mobile phone transaction service which allowed consumers to send and receive cash and make payments using text messages. “One simple SMS to register the user with Suvidha and the next SMS can be to send money as low as Rs 10,” lists Shrivastav, Suvidha’s chairman and managing director.

Shrivastav, who had set up the first pay phone privatisation project to deploy 1,100 payphones across Delhi and Mumbai within 6 months, spent several months in researching his target market. He found that a huge chunk of Indian consumer had no access to secured banking channels and thus relied on inefficient modes for transferring money to friends and relatives.

This year, between January and April, Beam card touched 250,000 subscribers covering over 250 districts in India. With an average transaction ranging between Rs 21, Shrivastav is fast teaching the unbanked masses a new way to shop for grocery, pay their utility bills, and transfer money in a matter of hours. Shrivastav is also hosting services like micro-credits and obtaining insurance as low as Rs 100. Realising the distribution hurdle that he might come face-to-face in reaching out to his target in rural India, Shrivastav’s Suvidha has partnered with Social Economic Empowerment Development Foundation, a not for profit organisation which recruits, trains and manages Beam Sahayaks or micro entrepreneurs. “Beam Sahayaks can supplement their household income by selling Beam prepaid gifts and providing transaction services like refunds and mobile prepaid recharge to the Beam customers,” claims Shrivastav.

Suvidha, in its next leg of expansion, is looking to raise money from private investors. “We have a target to reach 20 million customers by 2014 and that means adding more financial muscle to our company,” says Shrivastav.