Aditya Birla Capital will continue to evaluate various stake sale options for its subsidiaries, chief executive officer Vishakha Mulye said on Wednesday. “We will continue to evaluate options. We have already announced a deal on our insurance broking subsidiary. There is nothing on hand as of now,” she said. “There are 5-6 main subsidiaries that we have. All the other businesses are smaller for us,” she said at a virtual press meet.
In March, Aditya Birla Capital had announced the sale of Aditya Birla Insurance Brokers, a non-material subsidiary of the company. Aditya Birla Finance, Aditya Birla Housing Finance, Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Co, and Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance Company are among the key subsidiaries.
On Wednesday, the company announced the launch of Udyog Plus, a one-stop business platform for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) customers. The platform was launched through the lending arm, Aditya Birla Finance. This B2B digital platform offers a wide range of solutions for MSMEs, including financing, protection, investments, advisory and value-added services for managing and growing businesses.
MSME can avail of loans of up to Rs 10,00,000 through the platform, which has so far received around 5,000 registrations. Udyog Plus is integrated with government e-commerce websites through open credit enablement network and with private e-commerce websites to provide credit facilities to sellers.
Aditya Birla Finance has partnered with various solution providers to offer services like free access to business networking platforms, registration on the ONDC seller network, corporate travel solutions, zero-balance bank account, accounting, payroll, tax filing tools and specialised knowledge content hub to MSME customers.
“As a philosophy, we will ensure that it is a win-win proposition for both the sides. Or endeavour is that we use this platform as a customer acquisition tool and also to service our existing customers better,” Mulye said.
The total assets under management of Aditya Birla Finance stood at Rs 80,556 crore as of March 31, with exposure to business loans at Rs 40,353 crore. “If you look at the growth seen our lending business, Aditya Birla Finance has grown 40% and lending businesses do require capital. Few of these businesses will require large capital as we go forward. We expect the growth in market to be very robust on the lending side.”