{Fintech watch: Recko} Empowering finance decisions of fast-growing Internet businesses without a single line of code

This fintech startup offers a Financial Operations Platform to empower finance teams in fast-growing Internet businesses, that too without writing a single line of code.

As the convenience economy rises, users today demand access to goods and services in real-time. This means companies need to ensure that the buyer’s journey is easy and simple. Consumers also have their own payment preferences. Therefore, offering a range of payment options such as credit cards, digital wallets, COD, and so on, enhances the user experience and increases business opportunities.

However, finance teams still rely on spreadsheets and sometimes even offline documentation to track the transactions, which often form the basis of calculating fees or commissions, revenue recognition followed by reporting of sales, revenue and cash. This manual process is not only time-consuming but also error-prone.

“One small mistake can wipe off months of your profits,” Saurya Prakash Sinha, Co-founder of Recko, told The Tech Panda in an interview.

Saurya Prakash Sinha

The platform can simplify handling large volumes of financial data in no time, offer flexibility on how data needs to be leveraged and for what use case, and delivers insights at the transaction level, as compared to an aggregate level

Another issue in the financial ecosystem of today is the constant flow of money within the systems.

The exponential growth in unstructured data makes it impossible for finance teams to ensure business integrity and identify growth avenues.

“Through outdated technology, businesses may also be exposing themselves to inaccurate reconciliations, haphazard commission calculations, loss of revenue, or even a potential class-action lawsuit by relying on manual calculations of commissions,” he said.

The Recko Financial Operations Platform empowers finance teams in fast-growing Internet businesses with a comprehensive and robust technology stack to build and embed innovative financial workflows, such as accounting, reconciliation, commission calculation, payment orchestration and reporting, so businesses can accelerate growth, collaboration, and track and manage money end to end.

This ensures that every money movement is accounted for, and the financial needs of ever-evolving business are taken care of.

L-R Saurya Prakash Sinha & Prashant Borde Co-founders of Recko

“Usually, finance operations for any organisation are maintained on spreadsheets or ERPs. These systems have to be manually handled, and because the data has to be fed in manually, they can become a nuisance if things are rapidly changing for the organisation,” he explains.

“Recko can not only fetch data in real time, but also automate the financial workflows to reduce errors and redundancies. The platform can simplify handling large volumes of financial data in no time, offer flexibility on how data needs to be leveraged and for what use case, and delivers insights at the transaction level, as compared to an aggregate level,” he says.

What They Do

At present, Recko offers two products, Reconciliation and Commission calculation. They also have plans to release Payouts soon.

“This gives an edge for businesses to maintain their entire financial infrastructure on Recko,” says Sinha.

Reconciliation

Recko’s Reconciliation product is used by finance teams to monitor and track the money coming from all the channels like payment gateways, aggregators, offline stores, and going out to marketplace sellers, and delivery partners. The whole process of reconciliation is generally done once in 35-40 days due to the effort involved, but with Recko as a financial system, customers can do this on a daily basis.

Some of our customers, who integrated Recko early into their finance systems, drastically reduced the due diligence time during fundraising and got access to funds faster

This has enabled the finance teams to identify the gaps and plug them right away rather than waiting for it to accumulate over a period of time.

“Our customers have recovered large sums from partners and prevented doubled payouts. They are able to reconcile their Nodal/Escrow accounts easily. Some of our customers, who integrated Recko early into their finance systems, drastically reduced the due diligence time during fundraising and got access to funds faster,” he explains.

Commission Calculation

Recko maintains all the commercial terms and the agreed payment cycles in its system. This eliminates human error or guesswork.

Their Commission calculation module allows users to keep a check on the charges applied by their payment partners, marketplaces, acquirers, logistic partners, etc. It is built to handle usage, target, transaction, and tiered fee structures.

“Our customers have recovered incorrectly charged commissions from their business partners, payment gateways and closely watch transaction aging to ensure they don’t go short of working capital,” he adds.

Technology

Recko leverages concepts in Big Data, Analytics, and AI. Having gone through the unique challenge of dealing with scale early in their journey, the startup put in an effort into understanding and building modern concepts in Big Data and Analytics.

We have built a data platform that supports precision at scale, high consistency, and iterative data transformation and analytics

“We have built a data platform that supports precision at scale, high consistency, and iterative data transformation and analytics. Our platform supports critical functionalities like retrospective changes with audit trail, time travel at scale, and so on,” says Sinha.

Inspiration & Origin

Recko was born in 2017 as the global economy was witnessing a digital revolution. Sinha and Co-founder Prashant Borde started the company when they noticed that in digital commerce transactions, merchants faced certain issues when it came to reconciling payments owing to the sheer volume of data involved as well as complexities like return, refunds, partial cancellations, and missed deliveries.

“Traditional tools and spreadsheets could not scale to the demands of today’s finance function. To compete fiercely, businesses are looking into the data to ensure business integrity, financial control, and identify growth avenues to increase margins. But how they were doing this was quite challenging,” Sinha recalls.

What if there is a product that enabled Internet businesses to reconcile easily and thereby helped them make informed financial decisions. As the business needs and consumer behaviour evolves, their finance teams need to transform as well

“That got us thinking. What if there is a product that enabled Internet businesses to reconcile easily and thereby helped them make informed financial decisions. As the business needs and consumer behaviour evolves, their finance teams need to transform as well,” he adds.

The founders identified this problem in the companies they worked at and saw a huge uncharted business opportunity here.

“Having closely worked with the finance teams, ourselves, we understood how a product such as Recko would empower its users in terms of financial decisions,” he reminisces.

Growth Story

From a mere idea to a powerful product that servers customers across 24 countries, Recko has come a long way. Today, the company enables businesses to monitor large volumes of transactional data without writing a single line of code. It ensures that the money flow between the beneficiaries is in correlation with what needs to be paid out.

Recko’s global financial operations platform is currently used by consumer technology companies across Europe, India, Middle East, and Southeast Asia, belonging to industries like e-commerce, food tech, fintech, payments, gaming, etc.

The work that we are doing has become necessary only recently, given the massive growth in financial data, so there are no direct competitors

“We work with some of the best Internet companies globally, like Deliveroo, aCommerce, Bukukas, Grofers, Meesho, Dunzo, Pharmeasy, Curefit, Udaan, MPL, 6thStreet, and so on,” says Sinha.

“The work that we are doing has become necessary only recently, given the massive growth in financial data, so there are no direct competitors. However, some traditional players in the market are Blackline, FloQast, and Modern Treasury,” he adds.

Future Plans

The startup is looking to continue its growth trajectory by going deeper and solving more problem statements for the current market.

Our long-term goal is to provide enough insights that enable businesses to make financial decisions in real-time

“We are adding more products that will make financial operations a breeze for Internet businesses,” says Sinha.

They are also expanding their presence in international markets through focussed initiatives.

“Our long-term goal is to provide enough insights that enable businesses to make financial decisions in real-time,” he adds.

At present, Recko is a team of 100 with stellar experiences across e-commerce and fintech companies such as Flipkart, Amazon, Nutanix, PhonePe, Ola Money, Razorpay. So far the startup has raised US$7 million from investors that include Vertex Ventures and Prime Venture Partners.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard