Four decades old Alpha Steel & Power Ltd or ASPL (name changed), with a million-ton steel making capacity, its own power-plant and a coal mine had been a prospering enterprise over the last 35 years but something was not adding up for the last few years. ASPL had lately developed some special steel alloys in large demand by the industry, but it had been struggling with delays in payment for its in-voices raised on buyers across the country.

Non-timely realization of sales dues had hampered ASPL's working capital finances, and even disputes had arisen between Alpha, its re-sellers, and some prominent consumers of newly developed steel alloys.

The cyclic nature of the steel business meant that if Alpha Steel could not fix these looming issues in times of growth, then it will not be able to survive when the down-turn arrives. It was during such baffling days that a senior operations manager attended an industry webinar held by IOUX (an abbreviation for IOUX Exchange) which is part of an RBI registered non-banking finance company and learnt how IOUX could resolve these conflicts faced Alpha Steel and help it in timely receipt of payments and avoid disputes with its buyers and resellers.

Alpha Steel signed up with IOUX which led to a very positive and instant transformation.

Alpha's relationships with distributors and resellers became harmonious and its payment cycles became regular. Alpha Steel used IOUX based legally vetted reseller agreements which were e-Signed and executed online with properly affixed e-Stamp duties with its resellers across the country. Proper and customizable agreements at IOUX laying out credit period, quantity and quality specification were also online executed by Alpha Steel over IOUX with its buyers laying out the buyer's commitments including to acknowledge invoices and material quantity & quality in time and to make invoice payments within due dates.

The fact that Alpha Steel's buyer's authorized persons could be physically located anywhere but easily perform such e-Sign Invoice acknowledgements over the IOUX mobile app was a game-changer. The bankers could also then extend more working capital to Alpha Steel since invoices and bills were properly receipted and payments were received in a timely fashion. IOUX helped Alpha Steel perform the eKYC (to authenticate authorized persons) in a matter of seconds for all of Alpha's buyers & resellers, preventing fraud and fixing accountability within its sales network. The IOUX engine auto-calculates the requisite stamp duty for any type of agreement across varied states and union territories of India and Alpha Steel did not have to run around enquiring about such information nor bother for buying such eStamp papers which was a great feature and ease of use offered by IOUX.

Alpha Steel now uses several kinds of agreements and statutory documents for Human Resources, Financing and other purposes at IOUX. IOUX offers such services at a negligible cost.

The author has learnt that IOUX is duly audited by the Ministry of IT, Cert-In empanelled Information Security Auditors and it has already secured patents in digital contract execution and enforcement. IOUX is a licensed ASP of NSDLe-Gov for eKYC and e-Signing and an Authorised Collection Center (ACC) of Stock Holding Corporation of India for e-Stamp papers.

As per the Information Technology Act 2000, the NSDL e-Gov Electronic Signatures are perfectly legal and binding. And it's only time that such e-signing and eKYC will become the norm due to greater authenticity, traceability, and ease of doing business. It is convenient enough to download the IOUX mobile app from Google or Apple App Store and sign up on IOUX to start availing benefits to properly create and e-sign execute documents and agreements.

Such tremendous customer success stories like Alpha Steel are sure to transform IOUX into a major legal-tech and fintech player in the Indian Startup industry and possibly make IOUX a unicorn in the times to come!