Pragati, our rural finance partner subsidiary incorporated in Fiscal 2021, manages the origination, servicing, and collections for Northern Arc's direct rural financing business across rural and semi urban areas.. Its aim is to serve borrowers through an efficient, agile and scalable digital platform.
Pragati focuses on income-generating micro loans and household loans with most loans falling in the ticket size range of ₹30,000 to ₹125,000, across both women and male borrowers. Pragati also focuses on small business loans between ₹75,000 and ₹5,00,000 based on field credit rating and technology-led underwriting mainly in the unsecured loan market and includes cross-sell models for these types of assets.
Pragati adopts a phygital (i.e., physical plus digital) to deliver credit to its target customers. It has built a digital workflow application and integrated it with lending suites such as KYC authentication, credit bureau verification, account integration, payment and collection services, credit underwriting using data analytics, geo analytics, and rule and credit engine. As of September 30, 2023, Pragati operated over 215 branches across eight states and one union territory in India, and served over 370,000 borrowers. Pragati establishes multiple branches in a district depending upon its potential and risk assessments. These branches are usually located at taluka headquarters.
Pragati aims to become a one-stop lending shop for its borrowers covering small-ticket personal and business loans, two-wheeler loans, loan against property (LAP), home improvement loans, commercial vehicle loans etc.
Pragati therefore acts as a business correspondent for Northern Arc’s direct rural financing business and is responsible for origination, servicing and collections of all direct rural financing loans for Northern Arc under the able leadership of Mr Jagadish Babu Ramadugu, an industry veteran in India’s Banking, financial services and insurance Industry (BFSI).
