Latest news with #Ratio
Business Wire
3 hours ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Ratio Touts Growth of over 800%; Expands its B2B BNPL Platform with Launch of Custom Payment Terms, Adds Taxwell as Customer
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ratio is the only platform that combines embedded Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) with a fully integrated Quote-to-Cash system for B2B subscription businesses. Today, the company announced the launch of its Custom Payment Terms feature, which enables sellers to tailor financing options to match each buyer's cash flow needs—without sacrificing upfront revenue. This release comes as Ratio reports over 800% growth in the past 12 months and adds Taxwell (also known as Drake Software) as a marquee customer. The only platform combining BNPL + Quote-to-Cash, Ratio is redefining how B2B SaaS sells—and getting paid—at scale. "Businesses shouldn't have to choose between offering flexible terms and protecting their cash flow,' said Ashish Srimal, CEO and co-founder of Ratio. 'We eliminate that tradeoff by letting sellers close more deals, offer tailored financing to every buyer, and get paid upfront. And because Ratio is embedded in the quote-to-cash workflow, it reduces friction across sales and finance—not just in how you sell, but in how you operate. That's why we've grown more than 800% over the past year." Taxwell, a leading provider of professional tax and accounting software known for exceptional service and innovation, chose Ratio for its enterprise-grade Quote-to-Cash platform. Ratio enables Taxwell to configure fully customized payment terms that align with the needs of its customer base—primarily SMBs—while maintaining full control over billing, renewals, and revenue collection. By integrating Ratio into its sales and finance workflows, Taxwell can manage deals end-to-end with greater speed and accuracy, reduce operational friction, and improve both buyer experience and cash flow. 'We set out to find a partner that could deliver custom payment terms to match the cashflow of our buyers while supporting our complex sales, provisioning, and finance workflows,' said Matt Woodrome, Director of Growth Initiatives at Taxwell. 'Ratio stood out as the only B2B BNPL solution able to customize financing terms to how we sell and how our customers prefer to pay. As an added benefit, their quote-to-cash capabilities were more than sufficient for our needs, allowing us to avoid the cost and complexity of implementing a separate CPQ system. We expect Ratio to help us simplify quoting, accelerate deal execution, and better align our sales process with customer expectations.' Ratio's new Custom Payment Terms solution includes: Fully configurable schedules – Offer monthly, quarterly, deferred, or custom terms. Upfront cash flow – Sellers receive full contract value immediately. Modular Quote-to-Cash process – Unified quote-to-checkout-to-subscription experience inside CRM and billing workflows, configurable as a complete end-to-end flow or as a modular layer within your existing stack. As subscription models and flexible pricing continue to reshape how business buyers evaluate and choose vendors, Ratio offers sellers a critical competitive advantage—enhancing buyer experience, accelerating deal closure, and improving financial predictability. 'Today's B2B buyers expect the same ease and flexibility they get as consumers—and most sellers simply can't deliver that,' said Ashish Srimal, CEO and co-founder of Ratio. 'Ratio gives them the tools to close deals faster, eliminate friction, and scale with confidence. Early adopters like DearDoc have already seen sales lift over 30% after implementing our platform. Based on Taxwell's initial volume and deployment scope, we expect them to achieve similar results as they roll out Ratio across their sales, customer success and finance operations.' About Ratio Ratio is the leading quote-to-cash and embedded buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform designed exclusively for B2B subscription-based businesses. By seamlessly combining AI-driven quoting, flexible payment options, risk-adjusted financing, and streamlined billing into a single unified interface, Ratio empowers businesses to close more deals faster, secure upfront cash flow, and drive sustainable growth. Visit to explore how Ratio's innovative solutions, including Custom Payment Terms, can transform your business and redefine your sales process.
Tom's Guide
23-05-2025
- Business
- Tom's Guide
The iconic Ratio Eight coffee maker just got a major upgrade
Ratio's iconic Series 8 coffee maker just got a major upgrade. With its timeless combination of Chemex and pour-over, the OG has ben around since 2014, and while it's still a classic choice, Ratio has announced the new Series 2: "a new chapter for a modern classic". Shipping from September, the Series 2 is sure to be a hit. It takes the much-loved features of its predecessor to create something standout. Price-wise, it's $799, though at time of writing it was discounted to $639 for pre-orders. Plus, an extra $100 for a thermal carafe. The Ratio Eight Series 2 is an upgrade on the original, boasting dual recipe brew programs, a stainless steel and handblown glass pairing with a solid walnut trim, a flat bottom filter basket and added heat shield. This stylish update takes from the previous Eight Series and makes it, well, better. If you'd like the thermal carafe, it's an additional $100 on top of this price. The Ratio Eight coffee maker is a unique mix of pour-over and Chemex brewing. A complicated process if you're tackling it alone, but with Ratio's intricately designed smart technology, it's a whole lot simpler. And while the technique it emulates is complex, the design of this coffee maker is simplicity at its finest. A mixture of premium materials, it's eye-catching and chic – blending matte and glass with a wood trim. With all this in mind, it's a huge hit with coffee pros for both what it offers to simplifying the pour-over process and the beauty of its design. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. As the original Ratio Eight has been on the market for a decade now, there's a lot that's been learnt, and the Series 2 incorporates these tweaks into a new coffee maker that is sure to impress. So, with the Ratio Eight Series 2 model, the team has made some awesome upgrades. These include a flat brewer basket for a more even extraction, a heat shield for hotter coffee (though you can add the thermal carafe for $100, too), a better glass carafe for easier pouring, and the inclusion of a half batch and full batch button activated by long touch. These days, a coffee maker will typically lean towards a more modern design, like the Fellow Aiden for example. It's incredibly sleek, but the Ratio Eight series is focused on a different design – creating a midcentury look. With a combination of glass, matte premium materials and a sophisticated wood trim, it's a stylish and nostalgic option when compared to the best coffee makers currently on the market. Crafted in Portland, a city that you'll often hear married with the words "hip" and "trendy", it should come as no surprise that the Ratio Eight is made in Oregon. Plus, it's backed by a 5-year warranty, meaning Ratio is pretty confident you'll be getting wonderfully brewed pour-over coffee for years to come with little hassle. But while it won't be available for a couple of months yet, we'll be first in line to get our hands on this impressive Series 2 upgrade, and we'll follow it up with a review of our own.
WIRED
23-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
I Got a Sneak Peek of the Ratio Eight Series 2 Coffee Maker. Lord, It's Beautiful
Ratio's new coffee maker is a luxury machine that avoids plastic and makes delicious coffee. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. I've made no secret about my love for coffee makers from the Portland-based company Ratio, ever since it came out with the Ratio Eight model a decade ago. Two of WIRED's favorite drip coffee makers on earth are made by Ratio, in fact. As well as anybody, the Portland company has managed to take the finicky techniques of third-wave barista pour-over and merge them with automatic drip coffee to create some of the most full-bodied and aromatic cups of coffee I've had the pleasure of tasting. To taste it, all I have to do is press a single button. The machine does the work, not me. The Ratio Four (8/10, WIRED Recommends) remains my favorite single-serve drip coffeemaker made by anyone, anywhere. It's a masterclass in simplicity. But it all began a decade ago with the Ratio Eight, which helped change the conversation around what a home drip coffeemaker could be, adopting the aesthetics and a lot of the techniques surrounding barista café pour-over but applying them to an automated home coffee machine— using locally hewn wood and the shapely curves of a Chemex-style pour-over coffeemaker. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Well, now the Ratio Eight has gotten a makeover, for the new world of drip coffee it helped inspire—informed by all the coffee makers that Ratio has developed in the meantime (and even one they haven't released). The new 8-cup Ratio Eight Series 2, slated for release in September, is now available for presale on Ratio's website. For a limited time, preorders are discounted to $639. But by September, when the Eight Series 2 is projected to go on sale for real, that price will shoot up to $799. That's among the highest prices I'm aware of for a drip or pour-over coffee maker. Is it worth it? I can say I got to try out the new Ratio Eight Series 2 at Ratio's offices this week, just before preorders launched. I was very impressed by what I saw, and even more impressed by what I tasted. I won't know everything until I get to play around with the device at home. But the coffee I had was full-bodied, full-flavored, and delicious. And it's a beautiful machine. Here are the specs on the upcoming Ratio Eight Series 2—and my early thoughts based on trying the device. Ratio Eight Series 2 Design Specs Redesigned for More Consistent Coffee If you're a fan of the original Ratio Eight, chances are you were drawn in first by the aesthetics: the walnut wood accents. That pretty hourglass shape of the blown-glass carafe, with the conical brewing filter best known from café pour-over. The sturdy walnut trim stayed. But Ratio has learned a few things since making the original Eight, said Ratio founder and CEO Mark Hellweg, at a meeting this month that also included the Eight's designer, James Owen. One of the things Ratio learned is that using a closed, flat-bottom brewing chamber leads to much more consistent coffee than conical glass. It's easier to control both in terms of water flow and brewing temperature, and is more forgiving if you don't have a super-expensive grinder. (That said, you know, we like expensive grinders and recommend a few.) 'Once we went flat, we realized, 'This is the way,'' said Hellweg. I'll admit, I'll miss that pretty glass carafe, just on the visual level. Hellweg says they'll indeed keep making the Chemex-style carafe as an option. But the Series 2, by default, will look much different, though it still has its hourglass shape as a link to the past. Instead, the new brewing basket will make use of technology that Ratio developed when making two of my favorite coffeemakers, the Ratio Four and the Ratio Six Series 2, which consistently feel like magic tricks to me when I use them at home. I often find new homes for coffee makers I test. I keep my Ratios. Few others can manage such full-bodied, consistently thick extraction on automatic drip or pour-over-style coffee, while being so simple to use. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Brews Like Café Pour-Over The Ratio brewing method is somewhere between what a barista does in a third-wave café and a classic drip machine. First, there's the 'bloom,' which is a poetic name for pre-infusing coffee grounds with a small amount of hot water. This releases the carbon dioxide trapped in fresh beans, which would otherwise interfere with extraction when the hot water begins flowing in earnest. Another thing that makes café pour-over coffee express flavor so well is agitation. Basically, if you drop water onto coffee, or shake it, or spin it, the coffee will release its secrets better. It's like shaking an interrogation subject. (Actually, on second thought, don't do this.) One of Ratio's signal technologies from the beginning has used a 'Fibonacci-inspired' spiral showerhead, a shape often touted as a means of maintaining water efficiency. On the Eight Series 2, when Hellweg brewed a batch at Ratio's Portland headquarters, this meant that water extracted evenly across the entire brew basket, with no obvious channeling. So the falling water droplets extract both faster and evenly. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Temperature control is a more interesting and complex conversation. Ratio is one of a small number of coffee-maker companies who've had their devices certified by the international Specialty Coffee Association as hewing to a very tight set of criteria, which includes holding temperatures within a tight 4-degree (Celsius) range during the entire brewing process. But even this doesn't tell the whole story. I can attest from experience that not all SCA-certified coffee makers produce great coffee—and that great coffee definitely can come from noncertified coffee makers. Ratio does a lot of sophisticated firmware rejiggering to play around with temperature curves during brewing—what chief operating officer Bradley Walhood, in an excitable moment, called 'a literal crapload' of testing and firmware updates. In the Eight, this means that they mess around with wattage to change how the heating element works. Though the Ratio Eight Series 2 is a 1,400-watt device, they intentionally don't use all of it at all times, changing energy consumption in order to change how the heating element works over time and get the best-tasting brew. Like Ratio's previous Four, the Eight Series 2 will have two different brew modes for small and large batches of coffee, to further refine temperature curves and keep them in optimal ranges. Plastic Contact Is Minimized One of the biggest selling points on the Eight was always minimal plastic. There's a lot of interest in plastic-free everything, in these days when new and frightening revelations about microplastics seem to come once a week. But it's difficult, and very expensive, to make a truly plastic-free automatic coffee machine. Plastic-free brewing is a bit of a holy grail, achieved mostly by much older, lower-tech methods like French press, moka pot, and pour-over. The Eight Series 2 comes as close as any automatic drip machine to achieving this. The cold-water reservoir is a BPA-free Tritan copolymer. The base is also made of polymer. And there's a bit of plastic used in the heating element that doesn't come into contact with water, said Hellweg. But the tubing, inside the device, is made of glass. The pipe connectors are silicone. The chassis is stainless steel, and so is the brewing basket. The thermal carafe is stainless steel, while the nonthermal option is borosilicate glass. What all this means is that heated water or coffee never touches plastic. This also has the side effect of giving each part on the Eight a truly satisfying heft. 'Check this out,' said Hellweg, with evident pride, handing me a small and weighty piece of steel that could double as a stress fidget. It was the lid to the water reservoir. It actually did feel good, the weight of this lid. Plastic makes you forget the satisfying solidity of cast metal. These more expensive materials are reflected, of course, in the price. But It's Quite Pricey The preorder window offers a quite substantial discount on the anticipated retail price, but it's still not low. The $639 preorder price for the Eight Series 2, and the $799 anticipated retail price in September, are at the very highest end of drip coffee machines on the market. They're also double the price of Ratio's own Six and Four. Will the coffee alone justify this higher price? It's hard to know based on one delicious carafe of coffee. That's the sort of thing I'll only learn over time, when testing side-by-side. Compared to the Ratio Six, the Eight Series 2 offers the same 40-ounce batch size but some new programming and new technology—including the ability to optimize its brewing program for small batches of 20 ounces or less. But really, as with a lot of luxury goods, much of the cost is going into luxury: intangibles, style, loveliness, and of course, more expensive materials. In the case of the Eight Series 2, these costs will have a lot to do with the steps Ratio took to avoid plastic: the double-walled stainless steel, the borosilicate glass tubing, the American walnut wood. The new thermal carafe, with its stainless steel construction, is sturdy and lovely. Ratio's owners and designers also cited uncertainty surrounding tariffs, which is almost certainly a factor in announcing a price that'll first take effect six months from now. The Eight Series 2, like a large portion of products from small companies in the United States, is manufactured in China because American factories aren't set up for custom tooling on small production runs. All I can say is that it's pretty, and it brews delicious coffee, and it feels in my hand like a thing that costs what it does—in a year when a lot of things suddenly cost a bit more. But based on past experience with Ratio, the Eight Series 2 will probably remain the best-tasting cup of drip coffee I can get by just pressing a single button.
Business Recorder
05-05-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
Allied Bank: Earnings fall
Allied Bank Limited (ABL) has announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2025, alongside an interim cash dividend of Rs4 per share. As anticipated, profitability has taken a hit—primarily due to a steep drop in average interest rates and further weighed down by a rise in the effective tax rate compared to the same period last year. Unlike the previous quarter, where credit growth took centre stage, the latest quarter marks a return to the traditional investment-heavy balance sheet approach across the banking sector. The brief surge in advances during 4QCY24 was largely driven by attempts to circumvent elevated tax penalties tied to the Advance-to-Deposit Ratio (ADR). However, with the urgency subsiding, ABL's ADR slipped sharply by 12 percentage points from December 2024, landing at 40 percent—the lowest level the bank has seen in at least 10 quarters. This comes after a temporary 8 percentage point rise in the preceding quarter. The loan portfolio contracted by Rs39 billion over the quarter, erasing the Rs204 billion expansion seen in 4QCY24. The 23 percent quarter-on-quarter decline in advances marks the most significant quarterly drop for ABL in recent times. While this contraction is more pronounced than the industry average, it reflects a sector-wide pullback. Overall, banking sector advances fell 15 percent from December 2024, settling at Rs15 trillion. Interestingly, Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs), which hold just 8 percent of the sector's total loan base, were responsible for nearly a third of the Rs2.4 trillion dip, driven by a short-lived spike in lending triggered by ADR concerns. As credit growth cooled, banks—including ABL—redirected their focus toward government securities. ABL's investments surged by Rs366 billion over the quarter, translating to a 32 percent jump—well above the 11 percent investment growth recorded industry-wide. The uptick, mainly in Pakistan Investment Bonds (PIBs) and Sukuks, pushed ABL's Investment-to-Deposit Ratio (IDR) back into the 70s, its highest in six quarters. On the funding side, ABL's deposits saw a marginal 2 percent increase from December 2024, reaching Rs2 trillion. This trails the industry's 5 percent growth during the same period. The deposit base continues to be anchored in current accounts, with a slightly improved CASA ratio compared to the year-ago period. Robust growth in non-markup income played a key role in cushioning the bottom line. Fee and commission income remained strong, while capital gains more than doubled year-on-year—buoyed by favourable returns on Eurobonds and federal government securities. That said, operating costs rose sharply, with administrative expenses increasing by 15 percent year-on-year, well above the 1.5 percent average inflation during the quarter. Consequently, the cost-to-income ratio deteriorated significantly, crossing 45 percent. Even as headline macroeconomic indicators—such as inflation, current account balance, and exchange rate—suggest relative stability, the real economy remains lethargic. Both agriculture and large-scale manufacturing (LSM) continue to struggle, casting a shadow on private sector credit demand for the remainder of the year—unless the ADR tax floor pressure resurfaces out of turn.
