Records and Milestones at Equitas

Though Equitas is only a few month old ‘baby’, it has already created many records in the MFI industry in India and achieved many milestones. Today many of what Equitas does is being copied even by players who are operating for many years.

Some of the records created by Equitas:

In 5 months we formed the company, put in initial equity, formed the Board, received RBI licence for NBFC, established full IT system, designed and rolled out Product and Process papers, opened the first 4 branches, recruited and trained the staff and commenced disbursement - all within 5 months from incorporation of the company!.

Our initial equity of Rs. 13.5 Crores is a record for a start up MFI - the earlier record being less than Rs. 3 Crores.

The first MFI in the country to install the full IT system in place, before doing the first loan transaction.

4. Internet enabled software:

The first MFI to install internet-enabled core banking software. This enables the company to completely centralise all processing, giving real time access to information at H.O. Branches do not do any back office work - no membership data entry, no receipt data entry, no bank ledgers to be maintained, no bank reconciliation, no storage of membership application forms .... Branches only need to focus on customer interface - leading to high productivity and employee satisfaction.

The first MFI in India to, split the field officer role into Sales and Relationship management. Sales officers mobilise new members, train, assess credit worthiness, and bring them up to disbursement while Relationship officers conduct Center meetings and collect instalments. This has helped us improve productivity substantially compared to competitors. Our R.Os handle 2500 customers (against industry average of about 600) and in their spare time, do end-use verification of the loan amount too!!!.

First MFI in India, to extend ESOP to all staff of the company. All the staff are on the roles of the company - no contractual workers.

First MFI in India to apply manufacturing techniques such as Lean Management to an MFI process management. All processes such as customer acquisition, customer maintenance, back office process etc are put through standard time and motion cost study and actuals measured against budgets. Unitus Advisors’ inter-firm report confirms Equitas has the lowest cost of acquiring one new customer compared to large and small MFIs, Grameen and SHG model MFIs, urban and rural focussed MFIs etc.