Even as Bandhan Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. (BFSPL) readies itself for its banking foray, its founder-chairman Chandra Shekhar Ghosh says he will offer door-step banking to his new and existing customers, for whom Bandhan will remain the same entity but with which will offer additional services.
“There will be no change in customers or the services that we provide to them, although new services will be added as we emerge as a banking company. For our existing clients, it will be only a change in name from Bandhan Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. to Bandhan Bank Pvt. Ltd.,” he said during an interaction revealing his intent on seamlessly merging the microfinance services into banking operations.
As of August 2014, Bandhan had 58,16,529 borrowers concentrated in the eastern States and in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Its monthly loan disbursal averaged Rs.1,000 crore. BFSPL was set up in 2001.
World Bank arm IFC has an equity holding of around 11 per cent in the Rs.94-crore equity. IFC recently extended a subordinated debt of Rs.160 crore bullet loan to Bandhan.
“We hope to commence our banking activities before next Durga Puja,” he said sitting in his eighth-floor office which overlooks a large swathe of Salt Lake City, a swish residential-cum-commercial satellite township. Durga Puja begins end-September, this year.
It plans a hub-and-spoke model of banking with 600 offices in visible areas, acting as the bank’s face. The 2,016 existing micro-finance offices will be converted into banks, thus becoming the spokes.
Majority work on the 600 offices is already over and Bandhan would mark its footprint in every State. Barring Andhra Pradesh there would be 12 branches in the south, a region where it did not have presence as a micro finance outfit.
Admitting that scamsters were able to loot money due to lack of financial inclusion, Mr. Ghosh said that it was imperative to strike a bond with the un-banked, un-served population. “They must be made to feel that the bank is there to serve them. Bandhan will go to every door step with its banking infrastructure,” he said.
However, what may have surprised Mr. Ghosh most in his journey to morph into a bank is the response received to its advertisement for recruitment.
The ad for 200 jobs for 12 senior and mid-level posts drew 35,000 applications from all over the country.
