Supply Chain Finance Research: Mapping the White Space for Tech Lenders in India

During his time at Axis, Sugin took on a self-directed research project to map the supply chain finance opportunity in India. The starting question was specific: where is supply chain finance penetration low, startup and MSME activity high, and what is stopping incumbents from serving it?

He began by defining the boundaries of the market clearly, separating trade finance, export credit, and large corporate supply chain finance from the segment he was actually examining. This scoping step kept the research from sprawling into territory that was already well-served.

From there, he mapped the incumbent landscape: who was active, where they stopped in terms of ticket size, segment, or geography, and what gaps that left. He used a funded fintech lender as a case study to examine the anchor-vendor and dealer dynamics that startups faced, and he looked at the regulatory and co-lending background relevant to NBFCs operating in the space.

His hypothesis was that funded startups were structurally underserved in supply chain finance because banks required years of profitability before lending, and fintechs had not yet built the anchor relationships needed to serve them at scale. That gap was the opportunity.

He synthesized the analysis into a research note with multiple opportunity pockets, each identifying the gap, who was affected, and where incumbents were missing it. The output made a case for what a tech lender could do differently to win the supply chain finance market in India.