Ridhi DoongurseeFounder of CreditMonk.com Published On: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 Views 2852

"Change is the only constant"

Ridhi is one of those people who are always up for a challenge no matter what. She has an expertise in business strategy and development and well as analysis. She has completed her bachelors in computer science and business studies from University of Warwick. She started her career as a business analyst in UBS. She has multiple startups to her name, but is prominently known for her latest venture Credit Monk. It is a crowd sourced ‘shared information network’ for business owners & credit managers to review and rate the payment habits of their customers, their history and other credit related information.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

It is simple. You sign up for free – find the companies you have worked with and rate them. You rate them on – How their overall payment habit was, what credit you usually offer them, what your terms are, have you declared them as a bad debt ever, were the senior management approachable etc. Real on the ground issues. Click submit and it’s done. It takes less than a minute to add a company that’s not listed on the website and you can rate them immediately after. As reviews build up, before you work with companies you check their history on our website and decide your terms with them before you enter the big black hole of late payments and bad debt. Rating them will make businesses publicly accountable and will make companies take heed of the feedback on their payment habit. Who doesn’t like a little positive public recognition or react to public criticism? As a company owner, you can claim your company, reply to reviews, take negative reviews as positive feedback and eventually enjoy better credit facilities if you are a good paymaster.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

Having personally faced major setbacks due to credit issues, the founders aim to help improve the problems faced by manufacturers, distributors and professionals alike. Being in business we spent years on setting up a great business, offering a good product and giving good service. However, after spending considerable time and effort on trying to gain big companies as customers, we faced massive setbacks and lost a lot of money. There was no guarantee of payments, there was no source to get information on a company’s payment habit prior to doing business with them and no way to make them accountable or ensure others stopped giving them credit until they paid us. They would buy from one supplier, not pay and move on to the next one. And due to lack of transparency and no way of knowing their payment habit, everyone keeps supplying to them. 97% businesses report late payments. 2.2% of a business receivables/topline is pretty much uncollectable. Credit has come to a standstill simply because there is no way to know if you will get paid. This is why Credit Monk was launched. To create an incentive for people to pay on time and help make credit a good word.

What is your life mantra?

Ideas are easy, execution is key.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

I am a solution oriented person so it’s always about moving forward and taking things step by step while keeping the big picture in mind. As it’s quite early in the journey, I cannot identify a single challenge in particular.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

We are happily self-funded.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Persistence, self-belief and integrity…

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?