The Covid crisis in India has triggered a new wave of unemployment in the country. As the unemployment rate touched a four-month high in April this year and job losses have been increasing sharply, India Inc needs the support of its allies to help it pass the litmus test.
Attempting to turn this very tide on employment is the UK’s leading business financial platform, Tide. The business banking platform has selected India as its first international market, with a fully-fledged launch early next year.
Turning tide on unemployment
The company has announced it will create over 1,000 jobs in India over the next five years. It also plans to invest more than £100million in India as part of the hiring surge, thus contributing to the economy as a critical ally in its growth story. These jobs will be across a wide variety of roles, including product development, software development, marketing, risk and compliance and member support.
As a first step towards this mission, Tide recently announced its collaboration with its first banking partner, RBL Bank, one of India’s fastest growing private sector banks. RBL Bank will provide the bank account infrastructure for Tide’s India platform where members (SMEs) will have an option to open current and savings accounts.
Creating talent pool
Tide already has over 200 highly skilled employees in India, with most based in its Hyderabad technology centre. Tide is building a robust team in India, creating a pool of talented and experienced colleagues that will help build the business, scale operations and further Tide’s desire to unleash the true potential of Indian SMEs by helping them save time (and money) in the running of their businesses.
Betting big on India’s SME story
Commenting on the expansion in India, Oliver Prill, Tide CEO, says: “Tide recognises the ambitions of both the UK and Indian governments to build India-UK bilateral relationships with an enhanced economic partnership and sees SMEs as being crucial to economic growth in both nations. We at Tide are committed to serving India’s 64 million, and growing, SME sector, helping to unleash the true potential of Indian small businesses by helping them to save time (and money) on their financial admin.”
Through its investment in the market, Tide looks to contribute to both the countries’ vision of developing a roadmap to a free trade agreement with a target of £100 billion by 2030, he adds.
Building India-UK bilateral relationships
Congratulating Tide on the achievement, UK Minister for Investment Gerry Grimstone said: “I am pleased that Tide’s innovative business financial platform, part of the UK’s world-leading fintech ecosystem, is embracing the opportunities in India’s dynamic and growing SME market. The UK and India have ambitious plans to deepen our trade and investment partnership and bring benefits to both economies, and this is a great example of what we can do together.”
Tide has over 350,000 SME members and over 410,000 business accounts. Since it was founded in 2015 and launched in 2017, Tide has raised investment from major backers including Anthemis, Augmentum, Creandum, Goodwater, Jigsaw, Latitude, LocalGlobe, Passion Capital, SpeedInvest and The SBI Group.
In addition to business accounts and related banking services, Tide will offer a comprehensive set of highly usable administrative solutions. Not only supporting the organised SME sector, Tide will also focus on serving the unregistered and unorganised sector, helping small businesses digitise and bring them into the mainstream.