Incofin cvso disburses EUR 2.8 million to foster financial inclusion in India
According to the World Bank, in 2017, India still had about 190 million adults who did not even have a bank account. The only country with more people without access to financial services is China. India has made good progress in this area in recent years, but it is mainly entrepreneurs in rural areas who are finding themselves closed to reliable capital sources and financial services. Entrepreneurs therefore often fall back on informal sources of credit, which greatly increases the cost and risk of financing. In rural India, 84% of the credit needs of independent traders and SMEs are met informally. This is the gap Namdev aspires to fill.
Namdev Finvest Private Limited (Namdev) was founded in 2013 and has quickly grown into one of the leading non-bank financial players in North West India. The company is working to close the financing gap faced by micro-entrepreneurs and SMEs in remote regions. Namdev’s customers include dairy companies, small retailers, pharmacies, food processors, consumer goods wholesalers, farmers and textile companies. The rural customer makes up 81% of the total outstanding portfolio. The company is taking competitive advantages from traditional financial players which have an urban-focused business model, while Namdev’s model focuses on small tickets, physical presence in rural zones and transparent loan processes.
Since the company is in expansion mode, the EUR 2.8 million loan from Incofin cvso is very welcome and will be used to enlarge Namdev’s working area to the Indian provinces Gujarat and Mahya Pradesh.
Investment Manager Jairo Espejo and Investment and Research Analyst Ritesh Modi from Incofin comment: “Namdev provides a rare combination of deep social impact, a solid management team and a strong balance sheet which is backed by phygital underwriting and collection methodology: while Namdev values physical, human-to-human contact, the backend for loan origination and credit assessment is done digitally.”