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Piramal Capital and Housing Finance Ltd (PCHFL) will pivot to consumer facing retail business with a thousand physical branches post the acquisition of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd.
“The overall plan is first to diversify our book. We were mainly a wholesale real-estate book. We felt that we needed to diversify and get into a consumer facing retail business. With this acquisition, in the near term, our ratio between wholesale and retail book will be 50:50. Gradually, we want to take it two-thirds for retail and one third wholesale, Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Piramal Group, told BusinessLine .
Piramal Enterprises has paid lenders ₹34,250 crore to complete the acquisition of DHFL. This marks the first successful resolution under the IBC route in the financial services sector and is also amongst the largest resolutions byvalue till date.
Roadmap
Outlining the future roadmap, Piramal said the merger should take place over the next few weeks. “Piramal Capital and Housing Finance will merge with DHFL and then the name of DHFL will be changed into PCHFL. We believe that our brand will have a greater value and loyalty of our customers. Our retail book will grow by almost five times of what it is today. The infrastructure of DHFL will be used by us. There are 301 branches today. Piramal has 14. We will add these two and it will be a synergistic effect,” Piramal said. In the medium term, PCHFL will expand its network to about 1,000 branches and hire more people.
Commenting on the long-drawn-out debt resolution process, with as many as five rounds of bidding, Piramal said it was a long and challenging process. “There are always moments where you may feel it is difficult, but in my experience, I have found that you just keep going, doing your task, and then, ultimately, the result will come,” he said.
Asked if PCHFL could become a full-fledged bank, Piramal said that is something the company would consider in the future. “Let's see how the RBI is looking at it. They have given the working paper. We will keep improving our systems and processes to ensure that we are within the regulator’s remit and then let's see what happens,” Piramal said.
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