To give a fillip to the small & medium enterprises (SME), YES Bank is allocating about Rs 4,000 crore to this space in the current year. Till the end of March, 2010, the private sector lender had lent around Rs 1,500 crore to smaller firms.
?We have seen significant increase in demand from the SME sector as the economy comes out of the downturn and have lent as much as Rs 500 crore to this segment in the January-March quarter. We plan to focus more on this space and increase our market share,” said Sanjay Agrawal, president (corporate finance & development banking) of the bank.
Till October last year, YES Bank has been disbursing SME loans only from 13 branches. But it has started such operations from 33 locations. By the end of the current year, at least 50 locations would be equipped to disburse SME loans, helping the bank access more customers, Agrawal told FE. YES Bank is expanding its SME business only in those places which have a strong industrial base, such as the industrial towns of Ludhiana and Coimbatore.
On the hiring front, the bank?s employee strength for the SME business has risen to 300 people as at the end of March 2010, from 82 people in October 2009. The bank is expected to recruit an additional 100 people in 2010-11.
Last week, the bank unveiled its five-year growth plan christened VERSION 2.0?the Take-off. The bank aims to achieve a balance sheet size of Rs 1,50,000 crore, a pan-India branch network of 750 with a human capital base 12,000 by 2015. Rana Kapoor, managing director & CEO of the bank, said, ?We successfully concluded Version 1.0 on March 31, 2010.Version 2.0 (2010-2015) is clearly the most stimulating phase in the life cycle of YES Bank.?