Around 2016, GE Capital decided to sell its stake in SBI Cards & Payments Services, a credit card joint venture. Two global buyout funds, Warburg Pincus and the Carlyle Group, bid for its 26% stake. A third contender emerged, rather silently. That firm was Credit Saison, a credit card issuer from Japan.
Both Warburg Pincus and Credit Saison ultimately lost out to Carlyle but the Japanese company did not give up.
Many years ago, Credit Saison had realized that its future lay outside Japan. The company, therefore, set up a regional hub in Singapore. In south east Asia, it made equity investments or inked joint ventures. After the SBI Cards set back, it decided to set up a lending unit in India from scratch. That non-banking financial company (NBFC), Kisetsu Saison Finance India, made a profit before tax of nearly ₹100 crore in 2022-23. Its assets under management (AUM) jumped nearly three times to ₹5,000-6,000 crore from the year before. Its competitors grew, too, but not at this pace.
How did the company pull off such a feat?
Credit Saison still operates silently. You wouldn’t see the company’s name splashed across billboards in Indian cities. Its branch offices aren’t that visible either. In fact, very few outside the world of finance in India would have even heard of the firm. The name pops up during discussions with fintech founders, only when you nudge them to disclose their NBFC partners.
Fintechs without an NBFC licence can’t directly lend in India. Instead, they generate the demand, partnering with an NBFC to do the underwriting. Today, Credit Saison works with every major fintech, including the likes of Cred, Moneyview, EarlySalary, Krazybee, IndMoney, and Axio (Capital Float).
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