Sundaram HF’s ‘Emerging Business’ segment aims Rs 300 cr disbursal

CHENNAI: As part of its diversification strategy, Sundaram Home Finance (HF) has launched a new ‘Emerging Business’ segment to target the affordable housing (AH) market.

The segment will comprise the Small Business Loans (SBL) and the newly-launched AH financing. The company will also have two business drivers – the prime housing market focusing on the traditional housing finance business and the emerging businesses focusing on SBL and financing to the AH segment.

The company intends to disburse around Rs 300 crore in the emerging business segment this year. It registered net profit of Rs 236 crore for the year ended March 31, 2024 on disbursements of Rs 5,039 crore.

Lakshminarayanan Duraiswamy, MD, Sundaram Home Finance, said “We forayed into SBL financing in October 2022 and the response over the first 18 months has been quite satisfactory with the company having disbursed over Rs 125 crore to small shops and entrepreneurs in TN towards their working capital needs and business growth. We felt the AH financing has similar contours in terms of the loan amount, customer profile, market segment and geographies. We believe together the emerging business team can jointly cater to this growing segment of AH and small business loans.”

On the growth plans for the new segment, he said, “This segment will start off with the current set of 31 branches and around 300 employees. In the near term, our plan is to open around 20 branches in the emerging business segment in TN, Telangana and Andhra. We plan to hire around 200 people for this segment, largely front-end staff.”