Shailesh Patel had the sort of problem that looks, from a distance, like success. The Indian rice exporter had secured orders destined for Sam’s Club through a distributor. His suppliers wanted payment upfront. The customer would pay 120 days after shipment. In Drip Capital’s account, his bank declined the working capital he needed. The goods had somewhere to go. The money had nowhere to come from.
Drip advanced payment against his invoices. That transaction captures the company’s proposition better than a vocabulary list of financial products: an order and the cash from that order are two separate things.
- The job: release cash tied up in invoices and supplier payments.
- The customer: trading businesses with orders, payment delays and limited spare capital.
- The test: does the extra business earn more than the financing costs?
An invoice has two stories
Drip’s co-founders, Pushkar Mukewar and Neil Kothari, met at Wharton. Kothari’s father manufactured leather garments in China and exported them to America; waiting for payment was a familiar constraint. Mukewar had seen small businesses struggle to raise bank capital in India. Their company joined Y Combinator’s summer 2015 batch, then launched its initial exporter offering in early 2016.
To a seller, an unpaid invoice represents money earned. To a financier, it raises questions about the buyer, the shipment and the probability of collection. Drip built software to examine those questions. The company describes predictive underwriting and automated processing that use data to assess transactions and reduce manual work.
The distinction matters. A company’s orders can grow faster than the property it can pledge to a bank. Drip’s pitch is to assess trading activity without demanding hard-asset collateral. Its expertise sits where credit analysis meets the untidy documentation of goods crossing borders.
Get paid earlier. Pay later.
There are two ends to the cash shortage. An exporter can get paid earlier by financing a receivable. An importer can pay its supplier through a financier and settle later. Drip serves both, alongside a US revolving credit line for broader business expenses.
On its current US Vendor Financing page, the sequence is straightforward: upload an invoice, let Drip pay the vendor, then repay within an agreed window of up to 90 days. Drip advertises an initial credit decision in about 48 hours and subsequent invoice funding within 24 hours. Approval comes before that fast funding clock starts.
Receivables Financing moves in the opposite direction. A business delivers goods or services, submits its invoice and receives an advance. The customer pays Drip later; Drip releases the remaining balance after fees. The revolving line takes a third route: customers draw cash as needed and repay each draw in six monthly installments.
A recent company case study describes a California importer of groceries and kitchenware facing precisely that mismatch: overseas vendors expected payment at shipment, while grocery stores paid weeks later. Drip says vendor financing helped the importer increase revenue from $1.5 million to $7.6 million over two years. That is a company-reported customer result, without enough information to isolate financing from every other cause of growth. It does show the kind of operating problem the product is designed to address.
The menu covers different chores. Invoice finance can fund another shipment. Vendor finance can preserve cash while inventory travels. A credit line can cover payroll or rent. Choosing between them starts with identifying where cash becomes unavailable.
Two months have a price
Drip earns financing fees and interest. Buying time has a cost, and the useful comparison is with the profit on the business that time makes possible. A company guide describes typical vendor-finance fees of 1% to 3% a month. That is educational guidance, rather than a price promised to every applicant.
Simple fee illustration on an unchanged balance. Actual rates, fees and repayment terms depend on the agreement.
In that illustration, a $10,000 gross profit becomes $6,000 before other costs. A $3,000 gross profit would be swallowed entirely. Faster access to money cannot repair the arithmetic of a poor order. The same calculation should include a late customer payment, a disputed delivery or inventory that sells more slowly than expected.
The repayment schedule deserves the same attention as the rate. A vendor facility due in 90 days and a buyer expected to pay in 120 days still leave a gap. For anyone comparing offers, the useful questions are concrete: which invoices qualify, when does the charge start, and what happens if the delivery or payment is disputed?
Eligibility also narrows the audience. Drip’s current US receivables product requires a US-registered business with at least $1 million in annual revenue and buyers with at least $1 billion in revenue. Customers must be notified of the assignment. A tiny retailer selling to other tiny retailers does not fit those published criteria.
A bank alternative, financed by banks
Drip competes with bank credit lines, factoring firms such as Tradewind and digital trade-finance providers such as MODIFI. Its position combines transaction-focused underwriting, a digital workflow and several ways to bridge the payment cycle. Factoring itself is well established. The competitive claim is in delivering and underwriting it.
The technology has a specific job here: make repeated credit and document checks practical across many comparatively small transactions. A quick portal cannot make a weak buyer reliable. Better underwriting has to distinguish an invoice worth financing from one that merely looks tidy on a screen.
Behind that delivery sits institutional money. In 2021, Drip announced $40 million in Series C equity and $135 million in warehouse debt facilities. In September 2024 came another $23 million in equity and $90 million in debt. Equity helps build the company; lending facilities help finance its customers.
“We’ve achieved cash profitability and expanded our business during this period.”
Pushkar Mukewar / September 2024
That company statement followed the higher-interest-rate pressures of 2022 and 2023. By November 2025, TD Bank had supplied a $50 million committed facility, with an optional $25 million expansion, for North American Buyer Finance. In March 2026, Drip reported more than $9 billion financed for over 11,000 businesses. Cumulative financing measures capital deployed over time; it is neither annual revenue nor cash sitting on the balance sheet.
Count the days before the dollars
The lesson a reader can copy begins before any financing application. Map the date suppliers need payment, the date customers are expected to pay and the margin left after funding costs. Drip’s product occupies the gap between those dates. For a business with dependable buyers and profitable orders, closing that gap can make the next shipment possible. The sale deserves a celebration. The payment calendar deserves a spreadsheet.