Holding firmly to the strategy of doubling book by 2025, says M&M Finance’s Ramesh Iyer

SME book is running faster than the disbursements because previously we had institutional lending. If you recall, we had said earlier that we are into doing institutional lending but want to focus on SME, whether agri, auto, engineering, trading, and allied segments. Therefore, the book is running off faster than disbursements and growth rates are a little slack. But if you purely look at disbursements year-on-year, we are growing at 30 per cent plus. With respect to collections normally in the first quarter, NPAs go higher than what we closed on March 31. That’s the nature of the market. But contrary to that, because the level of activity has held up so high during this quarter, that for the first time we have actually seen a decline in NPAs over March. I think, we are seeing the best on the ground. Around 60 per cent of our collections are now coming digitally which is another reflection of the customers’ ability to earn and therefore are paying on or before the due date.