Chief executive Seema Prem told ET that earlier this month the under-banking financial services provider submitted an application to the Reserve Bank of India for a non-banking finance company (NBFC) licence.
Founded in 2012 by Prem and Sameer Mathur, the firm is looking to tap institutional investors to raise up to $20 million for the first time in the next financial year for its NBFC endeavor.
“We are confident that we will have an edge (for the lending business) because of our large network,” Prem said, expressing confidence that the company is engaged in data mining to keep customer acquisition costs very low. and the quality of the loan will be very high. “We will use DigiTech co artificial intelligence for lending.”
As a business correspondent, it takes financial services like deposits and loan products to under-bank customers in 40,000 villages through 30,000 banking outlets. The CEO said the firm does banking transactions worth Rs 85-90 crore per day, mostly for Jan Dhan Yojana customers.
Banking outlets are fixed-point service delivery units, operated by bank employees or its business correspondents, where customers can deposit or withdraw cash, cash checks, and borrow money. The RBI in its trend and progress report for 2019-20 said that this model has progressively reduced the need to set up brick and mortar branches, slowing branch expansion in rural areas even before the pandemic.
Despite the pandemic, the company was growing year after year. “We expect exponential growth in 2022 with the opening of the economy,” Prem said in an interview. The company plans to start talks with investors for capital infusion from next quarter.
Nine of the 12 public sector banks, including Bank of India, Bank of Baroda,
And banks are its partners. It works with and with the private sector as well. It has also tied up with insurance firms and to provide remittance service.