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Centrum & BharatPe's Small Finance Bank Targets to Become INR 40,000 crore Lending Business in Coming 5 Years

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The new Small Finance Bank (SFB) has been incoporated as ‘Unity Small Finance Bank’. The new establishment will aspire to become the ‘first digital bank of India’, stated Jaspal Bindra, Executive Chairman of Centrum group and Ashneer Grover, co-founder of BharatPe.

SFB are financial organization which offer financial services in underserved and banking sectors in the country. Payment Banks which can only accept demand deposits and can hold up to INR 2 lakhs per person, SFBS will accept all types of deposits, savings and current accounts, recurring deposits.

BharatPe is E-payment start-ups, founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018. The start-up has listed in the unicorn club in August 2021 when it raised $370 million at a valuation of $2.85 billion.

RBI panel suggested relaxation for those who had intention to convert to small finance bank last year. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), Local Area Bank (LAB), Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs) can covert theirs to SFBs. They are fit for certain relaxation such as INR 200 crore for a minimum paid-up capital requirement.

Centrum’ MSME and micro financing business shall be consolidated into new company while BharatPe will alms to the marketing of the product and development of technological product. Suhail Sameer, CEO of BharatPe said, “We will leverage the 50 Mn merchants on BharatPe’s network and the 100 Mn new consumers that we acquired as part of the Payback acquisition”.

The CEO of BharatPe projected operationalizing and development of product becoming market giant in the next 12 years. The company targets to become INR 40,000 crore lending business in coming five years.