M&M Fin's Ramesh Iyer confirms CNBC-TV18’s newsbreak of Raul Rebello joining as COO. Raul Rebello, who is presently the EVP & head of rural lending & financial inclusion at Axis Bank, will be moving to M&M Fin. CNBC-TV18 had reported this on Wednesday. To discuss this and the FY22 outlook, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Ramesh Iyer, vice chairman and managing director at Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services.

Iyer said, “Raul Rebello should be joining us pretty soon and it is for the COO position. As we work very deep into the rural market, and I have been saying this over and over, that the next 3-4 years could really be the rural time. I strongly think that it is going to be a good rural bounce back with monsoons, infrastructure opening up, etc., and therefore, we need to capitalise on all emerging opportunities in the rural market. We are broad-basing the management team to be able to handle all our new initiatives, to really go deeper and make the rural market bigger for us.”

On price hike, he said, “So demand is yet to pick up but you know, there is so much talk about everything opening up and I have said it before, I think post January, one should see commercial vehicle pick up well. I will not have a clue on what should be the price increase. But if there is a price increase, I am expecting, there will be a parallel freight increase as well. Because otherwise, it is not going to be very viable for the operators because the fuel cost has gone up, other component prices like tyre etc. are also going up and along with that, if the vehicle price goes up, I think it is only expected that the freight rates must go up as well. Of course, the load factor has to play a role if it has to, kind of overall become viable for the operators.”

On demand, he said, “I think the demand as far as used vehicle is concerned will definitely go up because people buy used vehicles based on the application. They look at the application, minimum load, minimum distance, and you will normally find a lot of single loaners. The driver becoming the owner, buying a used vehicle, therefore that side should pick up as the overall demand picks up. While the price of the used vehicle definitely will also go up parallelly as the vehicle prices go up. So it is good news for the used vehicles as well.”

“Of course, the school bus operators, the heavy commercial goods carriers, or for that matter, tourist vehicle operators, I think they will take a little more time because their operations have still not come back. So we look at it not by geography or whatever, but I think it is important to look at it segment-wise. I think these are the two or three segments, which could take a little longer, maybe it will go post festive season,” he said.

On collections, he said, “As far as overall collection is concerned, I think July was a very good month contrary to any past July. We are at 95 percent plus collection efficiency. I think the trend seems to be holding up, the sentiments are pretty positive, people are back on the streets performing their activity in most parts and when we met sometime in July, I said this that as things normalise, we would see bounce back of collections and we are seeing that very clearly.”

On growth in disbursements, Iyer said, “So if I look at just July as a number, we had something like Rs 2,500 crore of disbursements, and I am not too sure whether they should be compared to one year before story, because, you know, last July was not as good. But still, it was at 50 percent or upward of growth. If this is a trend that we see, sentiments are pretty positive, the footfall at the dealership is high, I think there is still some inventory issues out the…

(Edited by : Dipika)

First Published:Aug 26, 2021 11:03 AM IST