BENGALURU: Indian Fintech firm BharatPe, which has been hogging the limelight for spats between Ashneer Grover and the company’s board, on Monday launched Gold loan for its merchant partners. BharatPe is keen to focus on its business irrespective of various allegations that Grover has been tweeting ever since he resigned from the firm recently.
The company forayed into the secured loans category with the launch of Gold loan and the company has partnered with the Reserve Bank of India-approved NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) to offer gold loan of up to Rs 20 lakh.
It has already launched the Gold Loan offering for its merchants in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and will be scaling this to 20 cities by the end of this year. The company has also set an ambitious target of facilitating disbursals of Rs 500 crore by the end of 2022.
Suhail Sameer, CEO, BharatPe said, “Credit gap is one of the biggest roadblocks in the growth journey of offline retailers. Over the last couple of years, we have been aggressively focusing on solving this by facilitating unsecured loans in partnership with NBFCs.”
BharatPe has facilitated disbursals of over Rs 3,000 crore to 3 lakh merchant partners. “With Gold loan, we have ventured into the big-ticket, secured loan category. Gold loan will enable us to further empower our merchant partners and positively impact millions of small businesses,” he said.
Before the launch, the fintech firm had conducted a pilot for the product for 2 months, and facilitated disbursals of Rs 10 crore during the pilot phase. It is facilitating gold loan at an interest rate of 0.39% per month. The firm has been facilitating unsecured loans of up to Rs 7 lakh, to offline merchants and kirana store owners.
Gold loan offering to come to 20 cities
It has already launched the Gold Loan offering for its merchants in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and will be scaling this to 20 cities by the end of this year. The company has also set an ambitious target of facilitating disbursals of Rs 500 crore by the end of 2022.