A Marketplace Platform is a digital interface (portal, app) that brings potential buyers and sellers on one platform to enable renting, buying, swapping or negotiating. The proliferation of digital services has led to a multitude of choices at the hands of the consumers and ensuring that consumers have the first right of access to your product is paramount. On the other hand, as a consumer, your purchasing decision relies on a combination of factors – the services on offer, what are the benefits, how do they compare to each other, reviews and pricing of such services. As a purchaser, you are looking for such information to be made available instantly. This is where marketplace platforms are immensely effective.

Why are they needed?

Marketplace platforms serve three critical needs –

  • Aggregation of Data – Marketplaces work in bringing together different sources of information, service providers, vendors onto a single platform with standardized protocols and mode of consumption that helps consumers make an informed choice of the services on offer.
  • Reduce information asymmetry – By ensuring that all participants in a marketplace follows a standard set of rules and data management, marketplaces reduce information asymmetry for consumers. Customers have access to all data that can be comparatively assessed and evaluated before choosing a service that serves their needs
  • Ensure trust & accountability – One of the most critical functions performed by marketplaces is to provide consumers with a secure  platform which provides only verified and authenticated information and data. Platforms vet all information and maintain strict adherence to standards to ensure consumers can trust the data being provided as well as hold services accountable for any breach of contract.   

How Decimal is taking the first step in building secure and trusted Digital marketplaces

We at Decimal Technologies identified this need early on and have been steadily investing in building digital marketplace platforms that help our B2B clients identify services that can cater to their needs as well as offer their products and services to their customers. Decimal currently operates two distinct marketplaces –

  • Saarathi – A digital lending marketplace that helps connect DSAs/DSTs to Lenders directly through an end-to-end digital platform, Saarathi was born out of the challenges and hardships faced by Lenders in sourcing quality credit applications during the pandemic-induced lockdown. With DSAs/DSTs unable to travel and source credit applications and without the ability to share such information with lenders, this was a critical gap in the credit supply chain that needed to be addressed urgently. Keeping in line with this objective, Saarathi was born. An end-to-end digital platform, Saarathi allows your sales channel to source files digitally through a mobile app, perform all the requisite data checks and policy validations as may be applicable and pass the sanitized and verified credit application data to the lender. Currently, 4 loan products – Business Loans (Unsecured / Secured), Personal Loans, Home Loans and LAP are supported via the platform. Gold loans and Vehicle Loans will be added soon.
  • VahanaHub API Marketplace – VahanaHub is a Fintech API Aggregation Marketplace that aggregates APIs from 20+ providers such as Karza, iDfy, Authbridge, Novel Patterns, LegalDesk, IKarus, Legality, CKYC and many more. The focus is to ensure that any API that may be required for developing a digital journey for financial services is available from one centralized hub. The advantages of VahanaHub are as follows –
    • Easy discovery of new services – Allow teams to find and try new APIs as they get published or enhanced by providers. With over 200+ APIs, almost all APIs that are required are present, Decimal adds about 20 to 30 APIs to the marketplace on a monthly basis and new APIs also are added within 2-3 weeks of launch by the base provider. Categorization of APIs helps search and evaluate multiple APIs from different providers that could be used for the same purpose.
    • A single technical point of integration – This saves a significant amount of time and effort for technology teams as they do not have to worry about different types of integrations, security protocols, endpoints and request-response formats that may be promulgated by each provider
    • Sourcing integration – The procurement process is also simplified as you can leverage all APIs through a single contract. Decimal has reseller agreements in place with almost all of the API providers on Vahanahub.
    • Load Balancing & High Availability – Helps keep the services going all the time at optimal price
    • Orchestration – It is possible to orchestrate various APIs and have your own API created that aggregates multiple outputs into a single one.
    • Usage dashboard – VahanaHub comes with pre integrated usage dashboards that allows quick tracking of usage metrics

Decimal has always had a track record of investing in the future and pioneering solutions in the digital space. As we move into the post-pandemic future, we are interested in building and enhancing the platforms that will become the cornerstone of digital services in the future. To know more, get in touch at sales@decimal.co.in