Capri Global Housing to target lending at homes, SMEs in smaller cities

Capri Global Housing Finance, a subsidiary of Capri Global Capital, is looking to grow its loan book to over Rs 7,000 crore in the next four years by financing homes and small and medium enterprises in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

The company’s assets under management (AUM) stood at Rs 2,600 crore in FY18. “We are confident of achieving this growth and our drivers will remain lending to MSMEs and affordable home loans, as these segments have high unmet finance demand,” Rajesh Sharma, Director, Capri Global Capital told BusinessLine.

He said the target segment are home buyers with an average loan ticket size of Rs 11 lakh and Rs 15 lakh for MSMEs. “The inventory of affordable homes, which cost less than Rs 15-20 lakh, is fast selling. There needs to be finance availability for those without income proof. The market is huge, but we will not get volumes in one place. So we have to build a network of own branches across cities,” he added.

The company is planning to expand its branch network from the current 76 to 232 in the next five years. It is present in eight states across North and West India, and will add Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to the list.

He said the liquidity crisis being faced by NBFCs was a short-term phenomenon. “As far as the market is concerned, it is intact and asset quality has not shown any deterioration. What has changed is the supply of money, constrained by the cautious approach of bankers. Since there is no fundamental problem, liquidity will be back for lending to NBFCs in the next two or three months.”

Sharma said the demand for houses would not be impacted due to elections next year. “This is a consumption-led product and there is a shortage of houses. That is not going to change dramatically due to the elections,” he said.