Page 28 - Most Trusted Logistics and Supply Chain Brands & Booming Fintech Companies

20 BOOMING FINTECH COMPANIES IN INDIA BUSINESS LEADER IN FOCUS

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS YOU ARE
PLANNING IN RECENT TIMES?
The underbelly of U GRO is of a FinTech, however we
have remained cautious till date. We have done analyt-
from the inception of our business. In the post-pandemic ical and technology interventions combined with
era, we have moved to the second generation of the conventional prudence. However, with our GRO – Direct
scorecards – Gro Score 2.0 – which combines repay- platform in the Q4 of the current financial year would
ment history and banking analysis into one scorecard. demonstrate that we arrived both physically and digi-
tally equally.
We have invested in developing an enabling infrastruc-
ture from day one – through having a completely cloud-
based and zero-data-loss architecture and a loan origina-
tion platform that can produce a decision in 60 minutes
and uses digital solutions for all legs of the process. Our
onboarding platform hosts our proprietary scorecards WHAT DO YOU FEEL
and entire policy framework – making is replicable and
scalable in newer geographies and segments. HAS BEEN YOUR

HOW DOES THE COMPANY’S ECONOMICS LOOK LIKE? COMPANY’S GREATEST
Our mission is to service 1 million customers and have
1% market share of outstanding MSME credit in India by ACCOMPLISHMENTS?
2025. In our two and half year of operational journey of
which we had almost 8 months of complete disruption
due to Covid, we have crossed cumulative disbursals of OUR BIGGEST
3500 Cr and Assets under Management (AUMs) of 1900
Cr. We have grown larger and broadened our wings with ACCOMPLISHMENT SO FAR
our presence across 34 locations and covering 2000+
Pin codes. Our employee strength at present stands HAS BEEN TO COMBINE
at 600 employees. While we have been in investment
mode, but we have ensured that we do not burn cash THE POWER OF DATA FOR
and have remained profitable in the entire journey. We
are currently at a disbursement run rate of more than MSME FINANCING WITHOUT
Rs. 225 Crores a month and we expect this to accel-
erate even further in Q4 of the current FY. We intend LOSING THE BENEFIT OF
to double our asset under management every year and CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
deliver return on assets of 4.2% and return on equity of
18%+ by 2025. At that size we would emerge as one of IN THE LENDING BUSINESS
the largest platform for MSME financing in India.
WHICH EXISTS AMONG OUR
HOW ARE LEADING TECHNOLOGIES LIKE ML, AI
AND BLOCKCHAIN CHANGING THE ROLE OF FIN- PEOPLE.
TECH PLAYERS?
Historically, in the banking industry, consumer lending
has received a majority of the focus when it comes to
data analytics; but with the advent of diverse alternate
data and rapid progress in technology, SME lending
is on its way to reaching the same level of sophistica-
tion as consumer lending. We have already seen major FINALLY, CAN YOU PLEASE SHARE SOME ADVICE
developments in the area of customer onboarding. The OR YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE?
application of predictive modeling in credit assess- Every business should have a heart and soul and be there
ment, OCR of documents, signature matching, and to solve a unique problem. We are solving the unsolved –
facial recognition during video KYC – are well-known problem of credit for small businesses.
applications. New age participants are relatively unbur-
dened by legacy and are more agile when it comes
to innovation – this is fostering collaboration between
traditional and fintech players for distribution and
revenue sharing. U GRO partners actively with NBFCs
and fintech players to widen distribution reach. On the
other hand, we have become a co-lending partner with
the Bank of Baroda and IDBI – an example where one of
the largest PSU banks have partnered with a Fintech like
us and has adopted our method and technology for loan
dissemination.

28| Thecorporatereview.com | India | Vol. 2 | Issue 9 | October 2021