Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Digital finance platform Protium has disbursed more than Rs 3,000 crore in the last two years and built a loan book of Rs 1,750 crore, according to the company. Protium, which is into secured and unsecured loans as well as cash flow-based lending to MSMEs, consumers, and educational institutions, has serviced more than 5 lakh customers, of which over 1 lakh are MSMEs who have secured Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 crore credit, it said in a statement. Protium said it ‘remains significantly profitable’ with 80 per cent of the company’s loan book secured/asset-backed and NPAs at 0.22 per cent as of July 2022. The company was launched in early 2020.

“The fundamentals of financing have not changed in a thousand years. Technology is table stakes at this stage of the game. The key differentiator is how an organization fundamentally tie the two together – and this is where the DNA of a company really comes through. Throwing money and people at this problem is the wrong answer as many have found out. Also, At Protium, there is no such thing called growth unless it is weighed in by what risk it is coming at,” said Peeyush Misra, Partner & Managing Director, Protium.  

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Protium has created a credit servicing and processing platform to process loans up to Rs 30 lakh in less than five minutes using their technology system Turiya. “This hybrid model of combining offline and online operations helps Protium reach out to millions of customers while maintaining a high focus on both risk and growth simultaneously,” the company added. Currently, Protium employs over 1,600 employees across more than 60 cities.

Meanwhile, bank credit to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) expanded by 23.7 per cent in June 2022 from the year-ago period, as per the latest data by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on sectoral deployment of bank credit. The gross bank credit deployed to MSEs in June stood at Rs 14.29 lakh crore vis-a-vis Rs 11.55 lakh crore deployed in June last year and Rs 11.62 lakh crore in June 2020. 

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