Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Prashant Fuloria, Chief Product Officer at Fundbox (Part 1)

FinTech is making great strides today with the help of AI and bringing to small businesses certain kinds of financial services that were only available to much larger ventures once upon a time.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Fundbox.

Prashant Fuloria: Fundbox is a midstage Fintech startup founded in 2013 with offices in Tel Aviv and San Francisco. The mission of the company is to help small businesses become successful by giving them financial power. We are passionate about bringing technology to small businesses by providing a platform with multiple financial tools and services to help them be successful.

We are now headquartered in San Francisco with about 140 people equally distributed across the two offices. We are, first and foremost, a technology company. The majority of people here in Fundbox work on technology in some way, shape, or form with a very strong focus on user experience and data and Artificial Intelligence. We are privileged to work with a number of reputed institutional investors like General Catalyst and Spark Capital.

Sramana Mitra: What is the offering? To small businesses, what are you offering them?

Prashant Fuloria: The first product that we put out in the market about three years ago is a cash flow optimization tool. Our customers use Fundbox to get access to capital that they can use to grow their business. The number one reason why a small business might fail is not because the business is fundamentally unsound, but because they have a cash flow challenge.

The number one opportunity for businesses to succeed is to have access to capital when and as needed. Our customers come to Fundbox through our online product on the web or mobile. Through a fast and frictionless process, they sign up for the Fundbox service. For example, they could be using it to connect their accounting software through which they give Fundbox access to information that we can use to assess their business health.

Fundbox makes available for them a line of credit that they can draw on as and when they need. The product is meant for customers to tap into working capital when they need it. It’s very simple and very transparent.

Sramana Mitra: You’re providing credit against what? We have extensively covered companies like Kabbage where these guys are focusing on e-commerce companies and e-commerce companies that have shown a certain level of transaction volume.

They give them access to credit lines to address the same issue you’re talking about. Their criteria is a certain transaction volume in e-commerce. They plug into the eBay and Amazon merchants. What is your specialty? What is your positioning? What category of small businesses are you going after?

Prashant Fuloria: That’s a great question. While we serve a variety of customers from almost every vertical across every state in the US, we do an especially good job of helping companies that work with other businesses. Think of these as B2B companies and in particular, you can think of this as SMB to B.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Prashant Fuloria, Chief Product Officer at Fundbox
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