Welcoming a New Year and a Recap

Happy New Year! I am so happy to share that Kinara Capital embarks on #NewYear2020 with renewed enthusiasm. I suppose this time of the year tends to be one about reflecting, so, let me take a beat to share with you that the continued dedication and hardwork of #TeamKinara has resulted in the achievement of many important milestones.

Here are Top 5 Highlights as we ring in a new decade.

1. EXPANDED CORPORATE OFFICE: We kicked off 2020 with an inauguration celebration of our newly expanded and remodeled headquarters in Bangalore. Looking out the window from our new office here, I am feeling a bit nostalgic about the time when the entire Kinara staff could fit into one car. It brings me much pleasure to often hear laughter from the cafeteria and to see our Corporate Office team of over 200 employees feel at home in their workplace.

2. REGIONAL EXPANSION: Last year, we deepened our presence across our existing regions by adding 20 new branches across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Kinara Capital now has a total of 110 branches serving thousands of small business entrepreneurs in India. Over the last year, we doubled our employee base too, #TeamKinara is 1300 strong today and growing.

3. CONTINUED SOCIAL IMPACT: We have continued to grow sustainably and issued ~50,000 loans to various types of small businesses in the Manufacturing, Trading, and Service sectors. About 90% of our customers are new to business credit. Our hardworking customers motivate us every day to drive Financial Inclusion. Collectively, our work has impacted over 7,50,000 lives due to increased income generation, job sustenance and new job creation.

4. INNOVATIONS: From the start, we have invested in technology systems, digitization, and emphasized data-empowered decision-making processes to deliver an efficient and cohesive customer experience. We have eliminated unnecessary paper usage and simplified a complex lending process, especially for loans without property collateral.

By investing in both Technology and Data Science, we continue to innovate our lending process. In the last year, we doubled the size of both our Data Science and IT teams. With a strong technology-based backend in place, we are bringing many new features to the front-end for our customers and and improving customer experience at every turn. Most notably:

• We have reduced our lending cycle by 50% by switching to a risk-based pricing model. We do not rely on any one parameter, such as a credit score, to make our lending decision. We can also Fast Track the application process and reduced our turnaround time (TAT) to as little as 3-5 days in most cases. Our TAT is over 80% faster than the industry average. 
• The new Kinara Capital Customer App gives customers access to their account data at their fingertips. Customers can now opt to make Online Payments via the customer app or the company website.
• We have adopted Digital Franking processes in all six states where we operate. Customers are delighted to see it happen in real-time at the time of signing and our employees save a lot of time by no longer having to stand in long queues for the stamping process.

5. GLOBAL RECOGNITION: Last but not the least, we will always be grateful for the honor that we received for our pioneering work in driving Financial Inclusion of small business entrepreneurs in India. Kinara Capital earned global recognition by winning the Gold award as ‘Bank of the Year-Asia’ by the IFC/World Bank at the Global SME Conference held in The Netherlands.

Still, we are not the ones to rest on our laurels. As we kick off a new year and a new decade, we are poised to impact over a million lives together.

I plan to keep on doing more of what I love to do. I wish the same is true for you.

Cheers,

Hardika

#KinaraCapital #FinTech #FinancialInclusion #Entrepreneurs #India #MSMEs