DEAR SHAREHOLDERS,
We are delighted to share our thoughts with you on the completion of
the 14th year of our business. Today, we have now strengthened our work culture
and thereby reenergised our workforce, with all now waiting to see the next phase of
growth.
It's been our endeavour to serve the unique financial needs of our
customers. And this will be our foundation to take our growth story forward.
YEAR IN RETROSPECT
We began the year in the backdrop of the strength of underlying demand
drivers - improving GDP growth despite a strained global geopolitical situation, reducing
inflationary pressures, robust GST collections, and an increasing thrust on infrastructure
development. Your management has worked assiduously to strengthen operating controls and
processes, and to expand and deepen the senior management team. At the same time, the
strong backing provided by Brookfield and Everstone has helped us in enhancing our capital
base and provided us with added financial flexibility. The year was a landmark due to a
historic milestone of having raised incremental funding of around ' 3,967 crore on
consolidated basis, which bolstered our liquidity position and reflected in a significant
improvement in our Asset Liability profile. The Company has recovered
well after a couple of quarters of negative growth.
We welcome Karthikeyan Srinivasan as our new CEO, and Vinodkumar as our
CFO. Karthikeyan had joined the Company in May 2022 as the Chief Risk Officer. We have
great faith in their abilities and look forward to drawing upon their decades of industry
experience to take the Company forward. We also onboarde< other experienced people in
several key positions in both the Commercial Vehicle Finance and Housing Finance business
segments.
BUILDING ON OUR CAPABILITIES
To capitalise on the increasing potential in our key business
verticals, we strengthened our capabilities and infrastructure and relooked at our
processes. We also enhanced our operational performance by optimising efficiency across
branches while also maintaining continued focus on collections. We strengthened our
collection mechanism by adding people, harnessing technology, and strengthening our
culture, all of which enabled robust collections, resulting in all-time high collection
efficiency of 120%+ on a regular basis.
To stabilise our asset quality, we strengthened controls, reviewed
policies and upgraded technology systems - right from loan origination, credit appraisal
disbursal and collection process. With this, we are becoming future-fit and aiming for
sustained profitable growth.
Our investments in technology and digitisation will help us improve
operating turnaround times and productivity and drive operating cost efficiencies. We also
took sustained efforts to reduce our stressed book through collection, repossession and
settlement, besides identifying the stress pool in our CV portfolio and made conservative
provisions.
For better serving our customers in Tier 3 & 4 cities, we moved our
branch network into the hinterland, besides strengthening the hub-and- spoke model. We
remain focused on opening smart branches that operate with greater efficiency and less
manpower. Further, we
It's been our endeavour to serve the unique financial needs of our
customers. And this will be our foundation to take our growth story forward.
reduced our gross NPA, increased our reach and put processes in place
and incorporated technology to grow. Not only this, we also remain nimble-footed on the
cost front to manage profitability.
We have continued to pursue our retailisation strategy with a stringent
focus - by building the retail business in a highly scalable manner, continuing to surge
ahead on retail with our diversified bouquet of products - CV, Affordable Housing and SME
Finance. Driven by an increased credit offtake in commercial vehicles and affordable
housing, we are penetrating deeper and expanding our retail base, Today, 85% of our total
book size comprises of retail loans.
IN CONCLUSION
We would like to offer sincere thanks to all our shareholders, lenders,
partners and employees for their support and for being part of our journey. We also convey
our sincere thanks to our dedicated workforce for supporting the Company during
challenging times. Our growth is a testimony to the fact that with teamwork, motivation
and sustained efforts, everything is possible.
We remain committed to delivering value to our shareholders and provide
the best possible financial solutions to our clients.
Warm Regards,
Bobby Parikh
Chairman