Tide, UK’s business financial platform, has selected India as its first international market, with a fully-fledged launch early next year. Tide announced that it will create over 1,000 jobs in India over the next five years. It also plans to invest more than £100m in India as part of the hiring surge, thus contributing to the economy as a key ally in the country’s growth story.
Tide already has over 200 highly skilled employees in India, with most based in its Hyderabad technology centre. Tide is building a team in India, creating a pool of talented and experienced colleagues that will help build the business, scale operations and further Tide’s desire to unleash the true potential of Indian SMEs by helping them save time and money in the running of their businesses.
Commenting on the expansion in India, Oliver Prill, Tide CEO said, “Tide recognises the ambitions of both the UK and Indian Governments to build India-UK bilateral relationships with an enhanced economic partnership and sees SMEs as being crucial to economic growth in both nations.
We at Tide are committed to serving India’s 64 million, and growing, SME sector, helping to unleash the true potential of Indian small businesses by helping them to save time (and money) on their financial admin. Through our investment in the market, Tide looks to contribute to both the countries’ vision of developing a roadmap to a free trade agreement with a target of £100 billion by 2030.”
Congratulating Tide on the achievement, UK Minister for Investment Gerry Grimstone said, “I am pleased that Tide’s innovative business financial platform, part of the UK’s world leading fintech ecosystem, is embracing the opportunities in India’s dynamic and growing SME market. The UK and India have ambitious plans to deepen our trade and investment partnership and bring benefits to both economies, and this is a great example of what we can do together.”
In addition to business accounts and related banking services, Tide will offer a comprehensive set of highly usable administrative solutions. Not only supporting the organised SME sector, Tide will also focus on serving the unregistered and unorganised sector, helping small businesses digitise and bring them into the mainstream.
As a first step towards this mission, Tide recently announced its collaboration with its first banking partner, RBL Bank, one of India’s fastest growing private sector banks. RBL Bank will provide the bank account infrastructure for Tide’s India platform where members (SMEs) will have an option to open current and savings accounts.
