Amid the unprecedented uncertainty brought in by COVID-19, CSC Bank Mitra, backed by Incofin, has successfully raised its Series B funding of INR 120 crores from Maj Invest, a Danish asset management company.
Founded by Ajeet Kumar Singh, Pankaj Kumar and Ajay Kumar Sinha, CSC Bank Mitra intends to make financial services accessible to underserved rural communities by offering them savings and lending products through its wide network of touchpoints located within their vicinity.
The success of CSC's model is attributed to the critical need for financial services within reachable limits, which the Business Correspondent business has addressed effectively since the last decade. With a renewed push on this initiative by RBI and Banks, CSC's network will expand to more locations as well as increase the penetration in the existing geographies. With a longstanding presence in these geographies, CSC is also leveraging the market understanding to provide credit to rural communities for income generation and business growth through its two NBFCs subsidiaries (MFI and MSME). This synergetic model has resulted in all three entities running profitably.
The investment by Maj Invest will enable CSC to address the rapid growth planned for its business correspondent network as well as growth provide capital for its two lending entities.
The success is more heartening because it comes at the most challenging time in history. We plan to utilise the funds to capitalise and expand the non-banking finance and the micro financing verticals. We will also invest in IT to firm up our technology base to carry out operations through 100% cashless branches for better client service. We have 12 million clients living in rural areas. Our constant touch with this client base gives us the opportunity to rack the market dynamics and work towards rural employment generation” said Mr. Ajeet Kumar Singh.
Maj Invest is confident that CSC Bank Mitra will help steer a large number of underprivileged people out of the economic crisis. Amore robust, digitally enabled network that provides complete access to financial services is the need of the hour and we are happy to be part of this mission,” said spokespersons at Maj Invest, David Paradiso (Partner) and Siva Vadivelazhagan (Investment Principal)