The 10 Most Trusted Non-Banking Financial Companies to Watch in 2019_compressed

K UDOS
FINANCE
Funding Ideas, Empowering Ideators
An entrepreneur needs a few
basic things to start a
venture – a unique idea, a
target customer, and finance. Of
these, money and idea are perhaps
the most crucial. Many a time, they
have to let go of an idea just because
there wasn’t enough money to back
it. For such ambitious, purposedriven,
and self-employed people in
the country, the need is – access to
money. While banking institutes and
Venture Capitalists are doing their
part, the role of Non-Banking
Financial Companies has been
gaining attention. Kudos Finance
and Investments is one such
technology led data-driven NBFC
catering to those in need of financial
help to realize their potential. Since
inception, it has disbursed over 130
crores, completed over 1 lac loans
having over 50,000 unique
customers present over eight
hundred cities in the country.
Living the Dreams
It all started when Pavitra
Walvekar, then working in San
Francisco, returned to India and
noticed a massive gap in fulfilling
debt requirements for the underserved
market. It was a challenging
market to serve since its an
unsecured product with most
customers not having Strong
financial paperwork. The foundation
for Kudos was laid and through a
focused data led approach and
perseverance the team proved the
model and kept executing, even
evolving their offering with time.
Pavitra feels, “Our lives are
fulfilling when we have meaning and
purpose. Living a life that benefits
other people’s lives is the best way
possible to live. In a small way, I
have meaning and purpose with
families we support through
employment and the loans we give in
the market.”
He was later joined by Naresh Vigh
as Co-founder a ex-Bajaj and
industry veteran
NBFC – The Evolving Support
NBFC’s are catering to customers
usually overlooked and left out of
the formal system by private and
public sector banks. NBFC’s have
integrated them by being risk takers
and built specific niche
understanding of these markets. The
country can only grow if large parts
of the populations are part of the
India story. NBFC’S have broken
the link of large parts of the
population relying on loan sharks to
meet their financial needs, thereby
empowering the nation. Using
technology, NBFCs are enabling
achievement of higher scale and
predictability of service. It has
allowed on-boarding of customers,
evaluation and delivery of the loan
to be changed dramatically.
While they continue to provide
funding for various personal and
business needs, NBFCs themselves
have gone through a stinging funds
crunch in the last 6 months. Since
the IL&FS crisis, the funds from two
main providers - MFs and banks -
have been drying up. While a few of
the NBFCs had the mismatch on
maturity tenors for asset and
liability, but the majority of others
including the short team lenders who
did not have these issues had also to
bear the brunt. There are a lot of
discussions on opening up lines
through public sector banks or RBI
providing a special window with a
line of credit for NBFCs. However,
this needs to be resolved on an
urgent basis so that both the NBFCs
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August 2019|