How to be a startup friendly bank

From my experience with dealing with Banking sector as an entrepreneur, I have few feedbacks for Banks to make them startup friendly.

1. For single founder startups, Apart from the founder, the other directors are typically dummy, like a friend, relative. There is no point in asking all the director signature for every step. As a MD, the founder should have the freedom to quickly make decisions. Better get a comprehensive board resolution authorizing the MD to individually sign any applications.

2. Early stage Startup’s turnover usually will be in a couple of lakhs. Train Relationship Managers to identify a customer as startup and directly suggest retail banking instead of corporate banking and provide the required passwords in the welcome kit. Why burden the small team with a viewer, authorizer roles required for the Corporate account. It will be some time before a startup transacts in big sums. Then the account can be upgraded to Corporate.

3. Primary banking requirement for any startup will be net banking. Why ask for a separate application? The application can be filled beforehand and submitted by Relationship manager once the account is created. If startup team has founders spread across cities, then for every application a board resolution needs to be passed and hence time to consume.

4. Also Why can’t be the debit card be issued with the welcome kit. Why another application, board resolution etc…

5. And don’t expect a startup founder to fill a form to add an online payee. Make everything online.

6. Almost all the payment we do to our vendors like Google, Amazon etc are in a Credit card. Issuing a credit card, probably with a low value like ₹25k, will be helpful. No founder is going to elope with a 25K card. Banks now ask for 5Lakh, 10 Lakh fixed deposit for issuing a credit card on Companies name.

7. Finally, Have a Startup welcome kit. Put all this into it and send it to the founder. (or ask the founder to collect from nearest branch, if worried about security).

Tips for Entrepreneurs

1. Banks usually put a relationship manager in touch with you once you create a current account. Build rapport with your RM and most of the time you can get things done faster than calling the helpdesk.

2. If you need a credit card and Banks are not ready to issue a company card, get a personal card and use it only for company transactions. This will ease the work/confusion on the accountant part.

The author is Srix (Sriramkumar) is the Founder and CEO of Watchy Tech.