Dubai: A trade financing platform, 360tf, has raised $1.5 million in new funds five months after going live. The portal connects banks and businesses to manage their letters of credit financing needs.
“From chasing multiple banks and relentlessly following up for a single quote to availing real-time quotes from multiple banks after initiating a transaction, 360tf has completely reimagined trade finance,” said Nisarg Dugad, who founded the company along with Capt. Sunil Saraf, Pankaj Mundra and Vikram Lodha.
The promoters believe they can bring efficiency to a “largely offline, ad-hoc, and unstructured yet crucial piece of trade financing”. It also brings benefits such as non-recourse financing, low single-digit interest rates, and “market confidence to high-risk countries”.
To date, the platform has overseen a gross transaction value of $125 million plus and counts more than 110 businesses among its user base. 360tf operates as a scalable cloud-based platform that will leverage new technology in trade finance such as the tokenization of trade assets for distribution to untapped non-bank liquidity sources.
“We have brought down the turnaround time by more than 50 per cent,” said Lodha, who is the CEO. “Our customers process more than 50 LCs a month and utilize our flat pricing structure. They have realized significant gains in terms of time, effort, cost-savings, and operational efficiency by using the platform.”
