“We wanted to give some kind of a breather to our customers in the form of low-interest rates”, said Mr Mudit Gupta, SME Business Head, SREI Infrastructure Finance, when asked about what prompted the company to hold interest rate auction event ‘Paison ki neelami’ in so many cities.

A unique auction held primarily to enable retail customers acquire infrastructure equipment at low rates has met with huge success it terms of eliciting response from both customers and equipment manufacturers. Speaking to Business Line on the sidelines of the event, Mr Gupta, shared his insights on the current high interest rates and the challenges that lie ahead of the company.

Excerpts from the interview:

The concept of bidding for interest rates is quite unique. Can you tell us how the whole auction process is carried out?

“Paison ki neelami” is a concept where we partner with leading manufacturers in the infrastructure industry and offer various schemes to the buyers. Basically, interest rates are auctioned in the Dutch method. This means the bidding comes down from the cut-off rate. There are various rounds for different equipment manufacturers such as JCB, AMW, Volvo and Tata. Interested customers who have registered with us are issued a baton. The baton is raised as and when the bidder gets interested in the interest rates.

So, even if one customer raises the baton the round is over. . The final decision however, is subject to SREI’s credit approvals. While we do some pre-event credit approvals, spot customers are screened only after the event.

You have typically spread out this auction over several months in the last few years. What prompted you to carry out a series of these auctions this year in such a short span of time?

The cost of funds has gone up considerably in the last few months and so have the cost of raw materials for contractors. Interest rates have also trended up. We wanted to give some kind of a breather to our customers in the form of low interest rates.

But has not your cost of funds also increased in the meanwhile? How are you managing this?

Our cost of funds has increased. It was around 9 per cent earlier, but has increased by about one percentage point. That is why we have partnered with manufacturers who give product discounts. We pass on the discount to customer by offering them the equipment at a low rate.

What is the interest rate at which you have seen sufficient interest from the customers’ side? Would you able to pass on any further hike in CRR to your customers?

For a three-year funding, the average rate would be 11-12 per cent, whereas the market rate would be 15-16 per cent. But if there is another CRR or repo rate hike and the overall market rate goes up, we will be compelled to increase our SREI Benchmark Rate (SBR), which is 14.5 per cent. But I feel that the probability of increasing SBR is very low as we have already increased our rates in the last two months by 150 bps.

What is your view on the interest rate scenario?

I think this situation of high interest rates will not last more than six-nine months. Once oil starts cooling and inflation comes down, things will begin to ease up.

You have been carrying out these auctions for the last four years, how has the response been this time around?

Well, the response is phenomenal. It is mainly the retail and SME customers who benefit from these schemes, as they have less bargaining power with the financiers and manufacturers. And it is this segment from whom we have got the maximum response. Of all the customers assembled for the event, 90 per cent will be retail and SME customers. With each auction, we have seen more manufacturers coming in and, notably, not one has so far opted out.

The logic is simple — in the nine days of the auction, the equipments are seen by 20,000-30,000 customers. It is otherwise very difficult to have this size of target audience. And from the customers’ point of view, we have seen the numbers increasing manifold with each paison ki neelami.

Having high exposure to retail and SME customers may also peg up the risk of bad loans. How do youdeal with this risk?

Basically, we don’t see ourselves as financiers. We look at ourselves as an asset provider and the end user as the manager of the asset. So, as long as the manager is doing well we try and support him but if we feel he is incompetent to mange the asset, we replace the manager and hand over the asset to some other manager.

So, in essence we are banking more on the asset than the customer and because we deal with good assets and good returns, there is not much to worry. Besides, we can also transfer the asset to our other group companies, such as Quipo which is into equipment rentals.

How has the demand scenario been like particularly since the economic growth is slowing? How have your rental yields been?

Beginning of this year, we were all anticipating a growth of 40 per cent. But that looks difficult now. Demand has been scattered, for instance in the backhoe loaders segment there is virtually no growth, but in the excavator segment there is some growth. This is one of the main reasons why we thought of organising such events in the market. This will help us at least come close to our initial target.

Rental yields have come down after the run-up last year. Projects have slowed down, and that has had a cascading effect. Rentals have come down on an average by about 10-15 per cent.

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