(Disclosure:I am market making in the shares of Fino Paytech)
Fino has been in the business of rural payments for 10 years. Fino has done it all — starting with electronic benefit transfer in Andhra Pradesh in 2007-08 to issuing smart cards to beneficiaries under the Swasthya Bima Yojana, doing remittances for Union Bank for migrants in Mumbai from Uttar Pradesh. This company has grown through a feet-on-street model right from its inception.
It has 400 points for remittances and bill payments named Fino Mart across the nation, which,Rishi Gupta,CEO says will be converted into bank branches. It also has 8,000 agents under Jan Dhan doing enrolments and already handles Rs 7,000-8,000 crore in cash annually.
Gupta, a former executive of IFC, an international project financing company, moved to Mumbai in 2006 to work as a chief financial officer when Fino was still finding its feet.
“At that time, we had got reputed investors on board. This time also, we are confident of raising around Rs 500 crore and start the payments bank operations by the end of this year,” he says.
Profitable since 2010, Fino PayTech crossed revenue of Rs 300 crore in FY16. It does around 80 to 85 million transactions and handles around Rs 8,000 crore in cash through its platform every year. It has enrolled over 50 million people with banks of which 28 million are active.-from ET