Ajay Piramal led Piramal Retail Finance today announced its expansion plans entering seven new sectors beyond housing finance. It plans to expand to 10 new locations by June, launch 4 new products in FY22 and double its employee base.

In a conversation with CNBC-TV18's Ritu Singh, the company’s CEO Jairam Sridharan said that Piramal aims to be among the top 5 non-bank lenders. He also added that the company remains open to sell Dewan Housing Finance Corporation’s (DHFL) wholesale portfolio post acquisition.

“We have been making a lot of investments over the past one year to bulk up our retail business. In an organic sense, we increased our employee base from 500 at the beginning of the last year to about 1,000."

"During the course of the year we increased our locational presence from about 14 at the beginning to the last year to 40 and we are opening about 14 more in the next few months. We expanded from 2 products to 7 and overall we have made a lot of investments in scaling ourselves up,” he said.

Talking about DHFL, Sridharan said, “The process is going fine and it’s as per expectations. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) is taking the matter up on a daily basis but it is a complicated matter.”

“It’s premature to talk about the portfolio composition etc., but during the bidding process we initially got interested in the portfolio from a retail standpoint but then the process moved in a particular way and we ended up bidding for the entire pool, which is fine,” said Sridharan.

“As and when the process gets done and as and when the honourable NCLT allows us to move in as owners into the entity, we will look at all the pieces that are available, we will look at our own internal capabilities to see whether the portfolio is best served by us owning it and managing it or by looking at strategic options. We are keeping everything on the table and we will make the decision as appropriate once we are legally in a position to take that decision,” he said.

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(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)