Aditya Birla Capital CEO Vishakha Mulye bets big on MSMEs

Career banker Vishakha Mulye, who moved in as the CEO of Aditya Birla Capital in July last year, is eyeing the huge potential opportunity in the vast Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) segment as she believes that the credit penetration level in the sector is still quite low. 

Highlighting the fact that as much as 30 per cent of the GDP comes from MSMEs, the former Group CFO and executive director of ICICI Bank, said that there is a need to create awareness and enhance access to capitalise on the opportunity. 

“As much as 30 per cent of the GDP comes from MSMEs but the credit penetration is very low. What we need is awareness in MSMEs and access… There is a big opportunity in the market,” said Mulye, while addressing the media virtually on Wednesday. 

Incidentally, the company launched Udyog Plus – a comprehensive digital platform for MSMEs -- in March. The platform offers a paperless digital journey for business loans and loan disbursement of up to Rs 10 lakh. 

Further, the platform has been integrated with government ecommerce websites through Open Credit Enablement Network and with private ecommerce websites to provide credit facilities to sellers on these platforms.  

According to Mulye, the platform has already received around 5,000 registrations since its launch. 

Meanwhile, she explained that while there were reasons for the low penetration level in the MSME segment, much of the concerns have reduced as the segment is becoming increasingly formalised. 

“… there is a reason for the low penetration because it was very difficult to get access to these MSMEs and secondly, providing that kind of credit was expensive as cost of delivery was high. Thirdly, delinquencies were high in the absence of structural data. All these three factors have undergone change. As the industry is getting formalised, it is giving more comfort,” she said. 

On a different note, she said that while maintaining the high loan growth that was seen in FY23 would be difficult for Aditya Birla Finance – a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aditya Birla Capital (ABCL) -- the company is confident of a robust growth on the back of market opportunities. 

The company had posted a 46 per cent growth in the book at Rs 80,556 crore in FY23. 

“46 (per cent) is a large number, it is very difficult to continue to maintain that kind of a thing. As I said that we have created scale and size in our business, we see the opportunities in the market (are) immense. We have put all the building blocks in place, so I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t grow robustly as we go forward,” said Mulye. 

“Our NBFC has grown and outperformed the market in the last year. I expect the market to be robust on the lending side. So therefore, yes, that will be a good assumption to take,” she added.