Brú.Finance is a DeFi protocol bridging Blockchain TradFi Solutions with DeFi. It helps Indian farmers borrow against stored crops to avoid socio-economic problems. The platform has tokenized commodities worth US $500 million, plans to expand to other assets, and aims to entrench itself in one of the world's largest fintech markets.
The challenge Brú.Finance has taken head on, of connecting DeFi with real world economic activity, is dwarfed only by the sheer scale of our team’s ambition.
Brú.Finance has taken steps to bridge its Blockchain TradFi Solutions with the DeFi ecosystem thus becoming the first-ever DeFi protocol to already have a Traditional Finance on-chain lending platform at its backend. Brú.Finance is already present on Ethereum, Binance & Polygon test-nets with hundreds of millions of dollars of tokenized commodities.
We started our journey in 2019 creating a TradFi Blockchain lending platform for commodity finance which allows Indian farmers to put their harvest in custody of a warehouse and borrow money against this warehoused crop. This innovative product helps the farmers in avoiding distress sale of their crop to middlemen, helps them tide over the temporary low prices just after the harvest, provides them liquidity and then helps them get a much higher price thereby helping avoid socio-economic problems like exploitation, exorbitant high interest cost lending from money lenders, resulting debt trap and on occasion farmers’ suicide menace.
Once the commodities are stored in warehouses on our TradFi Blockchain, an NFT backed by commodities is created on our Blockchain platform and TradFi lenders like banks lend to farmers against these NFT denominated crop deposits. In operation, it’s similar to locking Ethereum owned by an Hodler on Compound/Aave protocols and borrowing money to tide over temporary liquidity needs. And mind it, Brú has been doing this in TradFi since 2019, much before DeFi or NFT were even on the radar of the cryptoverse.
Brú.Finance has successfully tokenized commodities worth US $500 million on its platform thus generating NFTs backed by real world assets to the tune of half billion dollars. Further, we have received warehousing financing limit to the tune of $330 Million from our TradFi lending partners that we will keep using to benefit the Indian farmers.
Bru. Finance’s efforts in the Blockchain TradFi space* are well recognized and supported by Indian government entities, banks, non-bank lenders, 000’s of platform users and prestigious international organizations such as UNDP’ ‘s SDGia, MassChallenge USA, University of Toronto’s CDL, ETHDenver, Microsoft, et al. Brú’s success story in social impact finance to farmers of India using Blockchain is already being taught as case study in the most prestigious business school of India, IIM-Ahmedabad.
Our work has won accolades across the globe, from both TradFi and Web3 ecosystems, from organizations like Binance, ETHDenver, Polygon, Indian Banks’ Association, DCB Bank, FICCI, ITPO, and Indian Merchants’ Chamber for innovative usage of Blockchain technology in facilitating lending against commodity backed NFTs.
This is still just a beginning and we are gearing up to create a world class global TradFi-DeFi protocol with operations transcending the continental boundaries.
If DeFi has to replace the TradFi in future, it can’t operate in an exclusive club and linkage with real economic activity is a foregone conclusion. With its direct lending TradFi real asset tokenization and lending traction, Brú.Finance is already well-positioned to lead the march of DeFi to the promised land.
Having started with tokenization and lending against one of the most liquid assets of the world, commodities, that also act as safeguard against inflation, Brú.Finance is well poised to expand its operations in other asset classes. Gold loan, being the most precious commodity, is our next port of calling. Mortgages, Equities, Receivables Finance, Exotic Assets Loans will follow soon.
Similarly, having started in India and lending to farmers there, using Blockchain for good and creating social impact by serving the un/under-banked, we are looking to entrench ourselves deeper into one of the world’s largest fintech markets. Said that, despite having one of the largest un/under-banked populations, India is not the only game in town. Brú.Finance has a global outlook from the beginning and we have already started partnership discussions in South East Asia, Middle East, LatAm and Africa. Please have a look at our litepaper for our future plans.
A mission driven organisation, Brú.Finance will be a global DeFi-TradFi bridge to reckon with in near future. We will be serving the unbanked, the underbanked, the farmers, the women, the small businesses through channelising excessive yield-hungry capital from global markets to emerging markets using the force of Decentralised Finance. That’s what the future beckons for Brú.Finance.
We are building bridges and creating opportunities for the crypto community to move out of its cocoon, make the twain of crypto and real world meet and create impact at scale for the people whom traditional finance has ignored forever in its infinite “wisdom”.
* The TradFi business of Brú.Finance is carried out by our group entity under the brand name of Whrrl (https://www.WHR.loans) .