MAM
SIDBI, MonetaGo team up to secure MSME lending
MUMBAI: When it comes to lending, trust is the best collateral. In a major move to fortify India’s MSME financing ecosystem, SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India) has teamed up with MonetaGo to roll out a cutting-edge fraud prevention and digital infrastructure solution.
The partnership aims to make credit safer and smarter for India’s small businesses, ensuring they get the funds they deserve without the risk of duplicate or fraudulent financing. This marks the first time a development financial institution has adopted MonetaGo’s technology, setting a new benchmark for secure and transparent MSME lending.
SIDBI chief general manager Y. M. Kumari said the collaboration would strengthen trust in MSME credit systems, especially in initiatives like GST-Sahay invoice-based financing. “By adding transparency and resilience, we aim to boost confidence in the lending ecosystem and help unlock the sector’s full potential,” she noted.
SIDBI deputy managing director Sudatta Mandal highlighted that de-risking credit flows is key to expanding MSME access and competitiveness.
For MonetaGo, the partnership is another milestone in its mission to secure digital finance. “SIDBI’s adoption of our Secure Financing system is a turning point for fraud prevention in MSME lending,” said MonetaGo India managing director Kalyan Basu.
Since 2018, MonetaGo’s technology has underpinned India’s digital trade finance framework. Backed by the Reserve Bank of India, it has already helped MSME financing grow by over 216 per cent since 2023, proving that when finance gets smarter, small businesses grow stronger.
Brands
Workday unveils Sana, a new AI tool for businesses
New conversational interface, 300+ skills and deep integrations aim to turn AI from sidekick to operator
CALIFORNIA: Workday has fired a fresh salvo in the enterprise AI race, rolling out “Sana”, a system it touts as “superintelligence for work”, designed not merely to assist, but to act. The pitch is blunt: stop dabbling with disconnected copilots and start letting AI run the plumbing of business.
Unveiled globally on March 20, Sana arrives as a three-part stack, Sana for Workday, a conversational interface; a self-service agent with more than 300 skills; and Sana Enterprise, which plugs into tools from Gmail and Outlook to Salesforce and Slack. The aim is to collapse the sprawl of enterprise software into a single AI-led workflow engine.
At its core, Sana promises four things: find, act, build and automate. Employees can query internal data, execute tasks such as updating records or contracts, generate dashboards, and trigger multi-step workflows, all within the same interface. The twist is where it sits, inside Workday’s existing systems, inheriting their permissions, compliance rules and audit trails.
“AI only works in the enterprise when it’s connected to trusted, deterministic systems,” said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and chief executive. “Sana is what brings it all together… a powerful way for people to search, reason and orchestrate work across the enterprise.”
The critique of current AI deployments is familiar, flashy pilots, little real impact. Workday’s answer is to embed intelligence where decisions are made and actions executed. Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology, framed it as a shift from suggestion to execution: “AI agents take action using trusted context, not just provide suggestions… a single experience where AI is embedded directly in the flow of work.”
Early adopters suggest traction. Berner claims 90 per cent adoption within 40 days, scrapping 400 ChatGPT licences. Cheffelo calls Sana its “AI backbone”, while Telavox says the conversation has shifted from automating tasks to reimagining entire processes.
Analysts, too, see a broader play. Josh Bersin described the integration as “a major milestone”, arguing it could reshape both customer and employee experience by making AI-native workflows the default.
Sana is being bundled via Workday’s Flex Credits, no separate licence, no added paywall, a move that lowers friction and speeds adoption. Meanwhile, Sana Enterprise extends the system beyond Workday, allowing users to search documents, schedule meetings or track project tickets across multiple platforms in one conversation.
The bet is clear: whoever controls the workflow, controls the future of enterprise software. With Sana, Workday is trying to move AI from a helpful assistant to an invisible operator. If it works, the software menus may vanish, and with them, the way work itself is done.
