5 marketplaces in Bajaj Fin's digital push

Bajaj Finance Ltd (BFL), one of the largest non-banking finance companies (NBFC) in the country, plans to on-board its consumers to its new ‘3-in-1’ digital platform from February onwards. The first phase of the digital platform has gone live with a staggered release, says the company after announcing the third quarter results.

BFL is developing five marketplaces -- EMI store, insurance, investment, health and broking app -- on the digital platform and it will provide the option to review, compare and buy a host of financial products and services across electronics, insurance, investments and health categories.

“It has been 15 months since we started phase 1 of business transformation project. Due to wave 2, it got delayed by 3 months,” said the company. Having received approval for running its own wallet business, BFL has already developed a wallet application called ‘Bajaj Pay’. It offers integrated payments solutions with PPI, UPI, EMI cards and credit cards to its customers. It plans to add QR-based payments, point-of-sale (POS) terminals and a payment gateway.

According to the management, it will roll out a two-wheeler marketplace, doctor RX (online consultation), short-term wallet loans, loans against securities (LAS), and loans against fixed deposit (FD). The NBFC is building the platform in two phases. BFL is also developing applications for merchant transactions as well as debt management.

The current consumer application has 16.5 million active customers as of December 2021. Of this, 6 million have already transitioned to the new application. In the third quarter, the NBFC has acquired 4.92 lakh new EMI card customers digitally. It has total new digital EMI card holders of 1.3 million. The company has 4.7 million customers on its wallet in December. It added 2.6 million in the third quarter.

BFL has a geographic footprint of 3,423 branches (1,368 in urban locations and 2,055 in rural) and over 1.28 lakh distribution points. The company is investing deeply in UP and Bihar to reduce concentration risk and create new growth opportunities, BFL says.

The NBFC delivered an all-round healthy performance in all its key business parameters in the third quarter, says Motilal Oswal in its report. The net profit grew 85% year-on-year and 44% quarter-on-quarter to ₹2,125 crore. The net interest income (NII) rose 40% YoY to ₹6,000 crore. The net non-performing assets improved by around 0.32% QoQ to 0.78%. Assets under management (AUM) grew 26% YoY and 8.6% QoQ to ₹1.81 lakh crore.