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Time of India
16-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Retail's tech revolution: How BranchX is powering kiranas with AI
By Nishat Manzar Visit any local kirana shop and you may dash across something extraordinary, which is going beneath the surface. As customers wander the aisles, availing themselves of daily necessities, the proprietor is behind the scenes plotting a digital revolution that would have been easy to imagine only a few years ago. This is the tale of how artificial intelligence is transforming the retail market of India , shop by shop. The figures are a case in point. The retail market of India, worth more than $1.01 trillion, is occupied by more than 13 million kirana shops that nearly contribute 93 per cent of all trade. However, such enterprises remained formally out of the banking environment and until about the recent past, they resorted to the use of cash and the accounting practices of the past that transferred no business potential. The difference between the significance of their economies and their digital accessibility led to a colossal innovative opportunity. Cue BranchX , a fintech startup launched in 2020 by industry veterans Sajid Jamal and Rajesh Johnny, who saw in India that the small retailers required simple technology to solve their exclusive set of issues. But instead of imposing sophisticated corporate banking instruments on corner stores, they created something altogether different: a computerised ecosystem that understands the language of the smaller businesspeople. The centrepiece behind such transformation is Xenie , the first voice-based neobanking system that is aimed at small retailers in India. The technology is not the only revolutionary aspect of Xenie, since the company is innovative in terms of user experience. The system allows store owners to engage with the system through vernacular voice and removes the challenge of digital literacy that has historically left the store owners outside of fintech solutions. No separate payment, bank, inventory, or marketing tools are installed; the whole package is integrated into a single smart POS device that thinks like a kirana store owner, not like a corporate banker. The impact has been substantial. With over 100,000 users, 30,000 wallet holders, and $50 million in transactions processed, Xenie is proving that inclusive fintech isn't just socially responsible, it's profitable. These numbers represent real businesses that can now access credit, manage inventory digitally, and tap into new revenue streams that were previously unavailable to them. The timing couldn't be more critical. Urban real estate costs are creating unprecedented pressure on small retailers, particularly in India's rapidly growing Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. As these areas densify, kirana stores face shrinking spaces, higher rents, and reduced inventory capacity. The retail sector occupies an estimated 500+ million square feet of real estate, and over 200,000 kirana stores have already shut down due to these mounting pressures combined with competition from organised retail and quick commerce platforms. BranchX's solution addresses these challenges head-on by helping retailers optimise their operations digitally. Through automated inventory management and embedded financial services, store owners can maximise revenue from smaller spaces while accessing micro-monetisation opportunities like local advertising and instant credit. This approach enables them to compete effectively with larger players while maintaining their neighbourhood presence. The company's vision extends far beyond individual stores. Through Xpandifi, their unified commerce platform, BranchX is connecting brands, retailers, and distributors in ways that enable social selling and global exports. This is particularly relevant as India's social commerce market, currently valued at $7.2 billion, is projected to grow sevenfold by 2033. Over 1.2 million Indian brands now sell directly through WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube, making social platforms essential retail channels. Meanwhile, their Tramo platform focuses on financial inclusion for rural communities, offering digital savings, credit, and insurance services to populations traditionally underserved by conventional banks. The financial fundamentals support this ambitious vision. BranchX posted ₹115 crore in consolidated revenue this financial year while maintaining profitability for the second consecutive year. The company has transitioned to public limited status and is preparing for a future IPO, backed by strategic funding and multiple acquisitions that strengthen its market position. With over 80 per cent of kirana owners now adopting some form of digitisation, BranchX is capitalising on a crucial inflection point in India's retail evolution. This quiet revolution happening in neighbourhood stores across India represents something larger: proof that the most profound technological transformations often occur not in corporate boardrooms or tech campuses, but in the everyday spaces where people live, work, and shop. For more information, visit: Authored by Nishat Manzar, NB Digital PR & Branding. The views expressed are personal. Brand Connect Initiative This article has been produced by the Primex Team. ETBrandEquity may or may not subscribe to the views produced in the article.
Entrepreneur
12-06-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
AI Neobanking Meets Kirana
BranchX has already clocked INR 110 crore in annual revenue and is gearing up for the launch of its next flagship AI product You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Walk into any corner shop in India—the kind where the cashier is a one-man army juggling payments, inventory, and sometimes local gossip—and you'll get a glimpse of the country's economic engine in action. But look closer, and you'll also see a centuries-old system in need of an upgrade. That's where BranchX comes in, and they're not handing out patch fixes. They're rebuilding the machine with voice, AI, and a deep understanding of the street level chaos that defines India's small retail landscape. Founded by Sajid Jamal and Rajesh Johnny, BranchX is not your typical fintech darling chasing buzzwords. It's a battle hardened, AI-first neobanking platform aimed squarely at India's underserved small retailers. "We're building a future where small businesses access finance as simply as speaking their language and running their shop," says Jamal. At the heart of BranchX's offering is the Xenie Retail PoS, a multilingual, voice-led device that blends billing, collections, inventory, and payments into one seamless experience. Think Alexa meets UPI, but with more grit and a lot more rupees. It's not just a fancy machine—it's a nerve center for neighborhood stores, capable of offering personalized credit, real-time reconciliation, and cash flow analytics. And for the 300,000+ merchants already hooked into their 10xfi platform, that connectivity is proving transformative. The numbers speak loud and clear: over INR 6,000 crore in gross transaction value flows through the 10xfi platform. And more than 10,000 retailers are now digitized via Xenie Retail PoS. But BranchX isn't here to boast. It's here to level the playing field, especially for small businesses that have historically operated outside the reach of formal financial systems. By blending connected banking with vernacular, voice-enabled tech, the company has created what it calls "a digitally intelligent ecosystem" for India's micro-merchants. The goal? To turn digitally hesitant retailers into confident players in the new economy. "The real challenge isn't technology—it's trust," says Johnny. "While tech is scalable, enabling digital fluency among first-time banking users is not. We tackle this with voice-led interfaces, guided onboarding, and AI that learns from users to build confidence." That's not just user-friendly design, it's a moat, and a wide one at that. BranchX's approach isn't just smart; it's strategic. Its modular, cloud-first infrastructure is built to scale, and its R&D labs are experimenting with Agentic AI and GenAI to automate processes and deepen personalization. Features like voice-led business insights, inventory prompts, and AI-driven credit scoring are already live, reshaping how retail owners think about finance—not as a hassle, but as a partner. With such groundwork, the road to profitability doesn't look like a tightrope walk, it looks like a highway. BranchX has already clocked INR 110 crore in annual revenue and is gearing up for the launch of its next flagship product: Xenie, the AI assistant machine that will sit right on retail counters, dishing out voice-led insights and financial nudges in real time. The company expects this to unlock high-margin revenue via premium services and cross-sell opportunities. And they're not stopping at India's borders. While domestic expansion will see the number of Xenie Retail PoS devices leap from 10,000 to over 200,000, BranchX is also eyeing the Middle East. "We're entering select Middle East markets through strategic partnerships," says Jamal, hinting at a bold new frontier for the homegrown fintech. On the back end, the company is getting ready to open the floodgates to fintech innovation. BranchX is productizing its embedded finance APIs and will soon launch a developer ecosystem—essentially a sandbox for third-party builders to craft custom solutions atop BranchX's infrastructure. It's an open invitation for fintech creativity to thrive on a platform already wired for scale. To fuel this ambitious blueprint, BranchX has secured a $5 million capital commitment from existing investors. But instead of blowing through it in one go, they've structured it as a flexible capital call over 10 months. It's lean, it's calculated, and it gives them the breathing room to stay execution-focused. BranchX stands out for one reason: it talks like the shopkeepers it serves. And in doing so, it's not just bridging the digital divide—it's quietly laying down the rails for a retail revolution.
