Local Equity: A Digital Platform Connecting Local Business Owners with Investors – A Review (International Journal of Creative and Open Research in Engineering and Management)

Summary

• Small and local businesses struggle to raise capital through traditional sources like bank loans, personal savings, and family funding.p.1
• Local Equity is proposed as a digital cross-platform mobile application to directly connect local business owners with prospective investors.p.1
• An example investment scenario illustrates a local business owner requesting ₹10 lakh in exchange for 10% ownership of the business.p.2
• The platform architecture leverages Flutter and Dart for the frontend, Python and FastAPI for the backend, and MySQL with SQLAlchemy for database management.p.1
• Data analysis and dashboard visualization functions utilize Python libraries such as Pandas and NumPy alongside Power BI.p.1

Key insights

1. Geography and local proximity strongly influence who receives funding in venture finance.p.2
2. Literature reveals a distinct gap in existing digital platforms regarding focus on local equity sharing and location-based business discovery.p.3
3. Security and account protection on the platform are handled via JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication, password hashing with bcrypt, and Pydantic data validation.p.5
4. Investors can search local business opportunities on the platform using filters like category, location, investment amount, and equity percentage.p.6
5. Key external limitations in crowdfunding and equity platforms identified in literature include data accuracy, regulatory requirements, and security verification.p.6