Veefin Working Capital Index: Turning a Data Gap into a Market Thesis

Varun came up with the idea for the Veefin Working Capital Index from scratch. The original brief was straightforward: map how efficiently India's top 500 BSE companies managed their working capital. What he built was considerably more ambitious.

He designed the research framework, defining the formula across days payable outstanding, days sales outstanding, and days inventory outstanding across ten industry sectors. He then commissioned Ernst & Young to run CFO surveys and extract balance sheet data, while his team shaped the questions and the Veefin perspective.

What the Data Showed

When the data came back, the concentration was striking. ₹25 lakh crore in working capital was trapped across these companies, with a sharp gap between the top performers in each sector and the rest. The index had done its job, but Varun pushed further.

He went back to CFOs to understand what they believed would make their working capital cycles more efficient. Then he went to the banks. What he found was that processing costs were running at 35–40% of sanction value, primarily because of minimal technology intervention. That cost was the real reason banks were not scaling supply chain finance aggressively, even though the incentive to lend was always there.

Rebuilding the Narrative

With that insight, Varun reshaped the entire report. The index became the foundation, but the story became about what banks and large corporates could do with the right technology in place. He demonstrated that technology intervention could reduce processing costs by up to 95%, making aggressive scaling viable for public sector banks that collectively hold roughly 60% of the country's balance sheet.

The final deliverable included a working capital index calculator that any company in India could use to benchmark their position within their industry and understand what to ask their banking partners. The report was co-published with EY and is forthcoming.