Aye Finance, a financial startup based out of Gurugram increases its revenue twice in amount in this financial year of 2020. It is a consecutive third year of profits for the company. Their loan book shifted in numbers from Rs. 1,047 Crores to Rs. 1,800 Crores in the financial year 2020.
Sanjay Sharma, Co-founder- Aye Finance revealed that the company had recorded a revenue of INR 210 Crore in the financial year of 2019. In 2020, the revenue had doubled! It is recorded to be INR 415 Crores by the end of March 31, 2020.
The company saved a lot of its unrequired expenditure by enhancing efficiency on technical processes, operations and employee benefits. This change in their system resulted in overall profit growth from INR 35 Crores in the Financial year 2019 to INR 40 Crores in Financial Year 2020.
Sanjay Sharma issued a statement saying that Aye Finances recorded an overall 80% growth in their business and loan portfolio in FY20, and as per analytics, it is expecting 30%-35% more growth in the FY21 despite the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the world and its impact on the economy.
The company was founded back in 2014 by Sanjay Sharma and Vikram Jetly. The company offers B2B loans to SMEs in India. A presence in 14 states of India, over 173 branches till date with 3000 employees, Aye Finance has provided approximately two lakh loans to 195K SMEs which roughly amounts to INR 2,800 Crores.
AYE FINANCE: IMPACT OF COVID-19:
As per reports and talks with Sanjay Sharma, he stated the company’s plan of action for tackling the COVID-19 situation and minimizing their losses were divided into different segments and strategies were devised. The company came up with the best to worst-case scenarios and the strategies to minimize the effect of the economic crisis on their business.
An optimistic, base and pessimistic approach was taken and plan of action at different points based on assumptions were prepared. What to do if the situation starts getting better by June with a high recovery rate by August?
Slow business growth in the financial year 2021 as low recovery and shaken economy. The company planted scenarios and their plan of action on every step.
Currently, Aye Finance is active on their ‘base’ plan where they are expecting recovery by November 2020. However, new loan distribution was stopped by the company in April to give due attention to the existing portfolio.
Sharma highlights the company’s focus on all segments of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and comments that there has not been a major downfall in its business. He says that if one sector was growing slowly, the other compensated for it and that balance of profit and loss was maintained.
Distribution of loans was classified into high risk, moderate risk and low-risk segments that helped the company to understand the situation of their loan disbursement. This plan was extremely beneficial for providing loans to their existing portfolio as well.
RBI moratorium played a major role in the company’s struggle to collect instalments from their customers. Aye finance struck with an opt-in basis to go through the same.
In a statement, the company also said that the customers that were negatively impacted by the RBI moratorium could opt-in for the moratorium to reduce their burden. The business that Aye Finance caters to are not specifically formal institutions and the focus for them is to maintain a positive credit history.
AYE FINANCE: FUND MANAGEMENT
The co-founder highlights that this new funding will be used for technological advancements and developments, reduction in operational finances and an efficient disbursal system to maximize the company. The debt funding shall be spent on offering loans. Not just it, a part of this new fund money shall be collected in an emergency fund for later requirements which is a great plan to secure the operations of a company.