Debtors Watch – A startup lead by a self-motivated Chartered Accountant
Could I do something which had helped me to recover my dues? Or Could I have done some background check before engaging in this business?
With lots of such questions in the mind and curiosity of getting all the answers with a perfect solution, Deepanjan Periwal, Founder of Debtors Watch, took an initiative to launch an online platform that will help businesses of any form and size to report trade defaults, perform credit checks and monitor their customer’s creditworthiness on regular basis. Since the launch of his startup idea in November 2016, Deepanjan and Team had made the countless efforts to make it a worth. And today the hard work has brought wonderful results and got him recognition under the #StartUp India initiative of Department of Industrial Promotion & Policy, Ministry of Commerce & Industry for their innovation under FinTech space.
Do you know who Deepanjan Periwal is and why he started Debtors Watch?
Deepanjan Periwal is a Chartered Accountant by profession and has over 9 years of working experience in Ernst & Young (EY), India and 3 years in the self-advisory role. These 3 years of his life into a self-advisory role have given him enough experience of bad debts and tactics to cope up with these situations. According to him, bad debts not only wipe away the revenue but also a part of your business profit. Deepanjan always wanted to know the recourse one could take against the debtors and this thing inspired him to start Debtors Watch.
About the team
Debtors Watch is a team of young dynamic Chartered Accountants (CA’s), Company Secretary, MBAs and technocrats carrying a diversified professional experience of working with large MNCs, Investment Banks and business conglomerates across diversified industries. Debtors Watch team is determined to provide quality services and continuously develop new features to meet the requirements of our members and society to help them take informed credit decisions and manage their cash flows efficiently.
What was the idea behind Debtors Watch?
It is reported that in spite of having a great business model, 10 out of 100 startups die due to delayed recoveries or non-recoveries from their customers. On review of Financial Statements of listed companies across various industries, it was identified that the bad debts expense accounts for 6-8% of their net profit.
“Sales is a Journey and cash is the Destination”
We all know this, however for few journeys; the destination ends up with bad debts. In today’s competitive environment, “Credit” plays an important role in the acquisition of new customers. However, there are no tools available to check the creditworthiness of the business, before offering them a credit. Often, the sales team of businesses is given targets and payouts are linked to those targets. In order to achieve the same, most of the times, sales team does not bother to check the credit history of the potential customers leading to delayed or non-payments.
Debtors Watch provides you an effective debt and cash flow management solution, by acting as a virtual credit manager and keeps an eye on all your Debtors through the use of its uniquely designed debt collection tools.
What is Debtors Watch and how does it work?
Debtors Watch is designed for all B2B business where credits are being offered to its customers and now they are facing delayed or non-payments from their customers. It is an online portal where one could register (for free) and report their bad debts giving one last chance to their Debtors to pay their dues.
DW sends email and text reminders to Debtors on reporting of a Default against them to pay their dues. Through its uniquely designed features like mandatory uploading of documents in support of a claim, PAN Validation of all Users, DW ensures no false defaults are reported on its platform. DW also provides the opportunity to the Debtor to defend the claim made by the Reporter by documenting his/her response to the claim on DW platform. Failure to meet the dues in stipulated time by the Debtor would lead to the facts of the above default being registered on DW portal which could be accessed by other members performing a credit check on this Debtor.
A subscribed member can also add its customer / vendor to its watchlist, to get alerted of any adverse reporting against them. DW also monitors and alerts of any civil or criminal court judgement against the business added in the watchlist.
For quick understanding, refer the attached video
How Debtors Watch makes a difference?
Debtors Watch is a first of its kind, user-friendly and affordable platform for all types of businesses across industries. It gives real time access to its users to a pool of factual data in the form of defaults registered on its platform.
With GST stepping in, India would become one market and interstate trades would require platform like DW to allow businesses to verify creditworthiness of a party before offering any credit period. There is no similar platform exists in India that reports bad debts and helps in debt recovery. Debtors Watch aims to maximize penetration in the SME segment.
How does it feel when you look at your Unpaid Invoices? What do you do to recover your bad debts?
Nothing, just follow up for the months and spend more bucks on expensive court proceedings. But this is not the case now. With Debtors Watch you can report bad debts and recover your dues.
Journey till now and how it is going to be in future
Debtors Watch have more than 500 registered users till now. They have got an overwhelming response since the launch of the platform. Their vision of helping businesses prevent bad debts and improve their cash flows will always keep them ahead. Debtors Watch would continuously work on providing innovative tools to its customers. Their new service offerings may include (but will not be limited to) synchronization with accounting packages helping in automated reporting of defaults.
The determination to make Trade defaults reporting into a Business as Usual (BAU) to weed out the defaulters from the business community, will keep them motivated to overcome any challenge.
Concluding Words
Don’t give up on your ideas and have 100% conviction on what you are doing. The struggle is a part of an entrepreneurship journey. But after every struggle, there is a success. So start working on your ideas and create your success story today.
