India becomes Tide’s largest market by customers, surpassing UK

BENGALURU: India has overtaken the UK to become the largest market by customer count for small and medium enterprises-focused (SME) fintech platform Tide, according to global CEO Oliver Prill. “India is close to 7 lakh, the same as in the UK, and is now growing over that,” Prill said during an interview with TOI, adding that the company has seen steady growth since entering the Indian market in 2022.“So the UK is a small market… India is actually bigger in terms of that,” he added. Tide, which started out in the UK in 2017, now commands a 12% market share in its home country, up from 4–5% in its early years.India's overtaking of the UK in customer count is particularly significant for the London-based neobank given the size and scope of the SME sector here. India has 63.4 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) registered on the government of India's Udyam portal online as on Wednesday.Prill, who is also a doctorate in Economics from the University of Oxford, believes that India must have 130-140 million MSMEs in total, given how many of these firms go unregistered and also because typically 9-10% of a country’s population are usually MSME owners. “That's just a good rule of thumb across the world, so let's take India being highly entrepreneurial as 10%,” he said.Tide India CEO Gurjodhpal Singh told TOI that the company had around 2 lakh members on its platform during its first year of operation in the country. Second year, it rose to 5 lakh and by the end of this year, the aim is to cross 10 lakh.“As we entered the first market out of the UK, the idea was to be in a market that had a level of digital infrastructure and had a size which could over five-six years grow into a $100 million annual recurring revenue, and then we looked at various markets globally and shortlisted on a few and then India really stood out,” Singh added.Tide is also increasingly using India as a launchpad for global product innovation, with features developed for the country’s complex SME ecosystem now finding relevance in international markets. One such product is the “structured partners” solution, first rolled out in India, which addresses the informal business relationships common among micro and small enterprises.“In the India market, you see a lot of small and micro merchants working with larger entities. For example, artisans get their raw material from someone, make the product, and then pay back. There has to be money movement here, which is often cash-based. How do we enable digital workflows in such cases?” said Singh.The structured partners solution helps digitise these informal supplier-customer chains, allowing seamless payments and better visibility into business operations. Singh added that the same framework has broader applications, such as in the tourism sector where operators manage multiple cabs and drivers linked to their business.Global CEO Oliver Prill said this product is a case of “India-first” innovation with global relevance. “Often it is UK first because it’s more established,” he noted. “But we may actually have new features that we develop here and then make available elsewhere.”Tide has since introduced the India-built solution in other markets, suggesting that India is no longer just a growth market for the company but also a driver of product strategy.