We are a non-banking finance company, or NBFC, registered with and regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, or RBI. We are engaged in providing microfinance services to women from poor segments of urban and rural Tamil Nadu. Our vision is to help two million families out of poverty by 2015. We believe we can do that by providing financial and non financial services to the poor and thereby recognizing them as a bankable segment.
We provide micro/small loans exclusively to poor women in urban and rural Tamil Nadu. These loans are provided to such women essentially for use in their small businesses or other income generating activities and not for personal consumption. These women often have no access to loans from traditional banks or financial institutions and generally borrow from private lenders that we believe typically charge very high rates of interest.
We adopt a joint liability group model to provide unsecured loans to our members. This model ensures credit discipline through weekly meetings, mutual support, and peer pressure within the group to make sure individual members are diligent in utilizing the loan and are prompt in repaying their loans. Because of the joint liability model, failure by an individual of the group to make timely loan payments would ensure the group to make the payment on behalf of the defaulting member or they would use peer pressure to ensure timely payment.
We have a first mover advantage in Chennai as we believe we were the first urban MFI to set up operations in Chennai in 2005. Our long and profitable track record and our focus on “credit plus” services are our distinctive competitive advantage. We finance our expansion by accessing both debt and equity and have recently closed a private equity round with a specialized microfinance focused fund based in United States.
In the last three financial years, we have expanded our member base from 200,000 women to over 300,000 women and our branches expanded from 74 to 99 in the same period. Our loan portfolio increased from Rs 74.5 Crores to Rs 142.5 Crores at a CAGR of 25%, in the same period our yearly loan disbursements increased from INR 123 Crores to INR 222 Crores at a CAGR of 23%. Our total income increased at a CAGR of 15% from Rs 11 Crores in 2008 to Rs 17 Crores in 2010 while Profit after Tax increased at a CAGR of 40% from 0.69 Crores in 2008 to Rs 1.9 Crores in 2010.
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