Diversification and best practices helped Vasudevan PN’s Equitas keep its head above water during the MFI crisis of 2010. Today, it has evolved into a small finance bank which could be an exciting, yet tough phase for the company
When Vasudevan PN started Equitas Micro Finance Ltd in 2007, he was anything but the storied millennial entrepreneur. He was all of 45 and had 17 years of experience in the financial sector behind him. He had stumbled into entrepreneurship after he was forced to cut short an 18-month stint as head of consumer banking operations at Development Credit Bank (DCB) in Mumbai. His daughter’s ill health, after they moved to the city in 2005, forced him to return to Chennai, where he had spent the previous 14 years working for Cholamandalam Investment and Finance, part of the Murugappa Group.
In search of a job and being an old hand in the lending space, Vasudevan—Vasu to friends—was driven by the thought of financing low-income people who were underserved by banks, and also those at the bottom of the pyramid, such as slum dwellers and the homeless. At the time, microfinance institutions (MFIs) were the flavour of the season following Sequoia Capital’s $11.5 million investment into SKS Microfinance (now Bharat Financial Inclusion). Experience met passion and the idea took offin 2007 with seed funding from old friends MA Alagappan, then executive chairman of the Murugappa Group; M Anandan, Cholamandalam’s former managing director and Manappuram Finance’s Chairman and Managing Director VP Nandakumar. (These strategic investors exited in 2010-11.)
In the decade since, the business has grown by leaps and bounds. Equitas, in 2010, diversified into a non-banking financial company (NBFC), with interests in housing (Equitas Housing Finance) and vehicle finance (Equitas Finance). The diversification was necessary to survive the deluge that swept the MFI industry that year following allegations of unfair loan recovery practices and the subsequent suicides of borrowers in Andhra Pradesh.
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