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| Pia Shome, Chief People Officer, U GRO Capital |
U GRO Capital, a listed, small business lending fintech platform has embarked on its aspirational expansion in the tier 3-4 regions in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka. The company aims to expand its network of 34 branches to 100 by the end of FY 2022. It will be adding 50 ‘micro’ branches in the mentioned locations, to extend formal credit to the micro businesses.
Complementing the geographical expansion, the company plans to more than double its employee strength. With the count increasing rapidly, U GRO Capital recently crossed the 550 employee mark, and plans to augment it to ~1000 employees. The hiring, which also includes a significant portion of campus recruitment, will help create employment opportunities for the homegrown workforce in these tier 3-4 regions. The entire hiring process will be executed virtually right from recruitment to onboarding and induction.
To enhance its capabilities across all the key business and operational facets, U GRO Capital is extensively investing in disciplines including but not limited to product, technology, infrastructure, innovation and human resource. The hires, hence, will be made across multiple departments such as strategy, treasury, operations, finance, technology, human resources, sales, credit, staffing, and marketing, amongst others. The guiding imperative is to build a robust organizational structure with the right mix of human and technological capabilities, to resonate with the growing business.
On the diversity and inclusion front, U GRO Capital aims to achieve a gender ratio of 20% by FY 2022 doubling the rate from 10% currently. The work has already started as the company is recruiting women at key leadership positions.
Pia Shome, Chief People Officer, U GRO Capital said, “We, at U GRO Capital, envision to solve the unsolved MSME credit gap and have laid a strong foundation towards the same. We have now set on our aspirational growth journey and scaling up of our current ~550 members’ strong team to 1000 is a critical aspect. In fact another 250 People from diverse background across various work profiles & levels are set to join us in the next two months. As we take significant strides towards our mission, U GRO Capital’s programs are designed to enable fast tracked growth for the employees as well, while keeping their well-being at the forefront”.
As of August 31, 2021, U GRO Capital’s cumulative disbursement had crossed INR 3,300 crore and its assets under management (AUM) stood at INR 1,729 crore. In the next five years, U GRO Capital aspires to build an INR 20,000 crore of AUM while acquiring approximately 1% market share of the outstanding MSME credit in India by opening around 270 branches. This will help in its bid to serve over lacs of small business customers.
U GRO Capital limited is a listed (NSE, BSE), MSME lending fintech platform. U GRO Capital’s mission is ‘Solve the Unsolved’ – Small Business Credit Need with its omnichannel distribution model combining physical and digital journey of the customer. The Company envisions to spearhead India’s transition of MSME lending market to the new age of on-tap financing. It uses the emerging Data Tripod of GST, Banking and Bureau coupled with its sectoral analysis to solve the problem of credit for small businesses.
U GRO aspires to serve one million small businesses with an asset book of 1% of outstanding MSME credit of India as its first milestone.
Technology underpins every aspect of U GRO’s lending process, from API integrations, sectoral and sub-sectoral statistical scorecards, state-of-the-art AI/ML credit underwriting engine combining bank, bureau and GST statement analysers, automated policy approvals, and machine learning OCR technology. Company’s GRO Extreme platform empowers fintech and other institutional platforms to deepen their distribution reach through a plug and play API driven seamless integration with U GRO. The company has developed full tech stack to fully automate the complete life cycle of a loan right from origination to collection during the entire customer journey.
The Company has raised ~₹ 2500 crore of equity & debt capital from marquee Private Equity Investors, Family Offices, Banks and other Financial Institution over last 3 years.
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