Khushru Jijina is the Managing Director of Piramal Capital & Housing Finance. A Chartered Accountant with an illustrious career spanning well over three decades in the field of real estate, corporate finance and treasury management, he has been with the Piramal Group for around 18 years. His role encompasses overseeing the entire spectrum of activities ranging from origination, investments, asset management, exits and new fundraisings.
The Financial Group
Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited (PCHFL) is registered as a housing finance company with National Housing Bank (NHB). It is engaged in various financial services businesses and provides both wholesale and retail funding opportunities across industry sectors.
In real estate, it provides housing finance and other financing solutions across the entire capital stack such as structured debt, construction finance, flexible lease rental discounting etc. PCHFL also offers customised financing solutions to the hospitality sector.
The wholesale business in the non-real estate sector includes separate verticals:
Corporate Finance (CFG) – It provides customized funding solutions to companies across sectors such as infrastructure, renewable energy, industrials, etc.
Emerging Corporate Lending (ECL) – It focuses on providing funds to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Tech-transformation
The country’s NBFC sector is experiencing rapid growth, due to macroeconomic conditions and high credit penetration. It is also witnessing major disruptions through the adoption of tech-driven innovations. In its early days, PCHFL focused on building a standardized set of systems, business processes and underwriting standards to achieve scale and redefining the market with innovative products. Today it is touted as having some of the best processes and governance standards as evidenced and validated at multiple instances by the regulators, various external service providers as well as the rating agencies themselves.
Leveraging technology, PCHFL adopted a customized and built to suit technology platform that spans the entire wholesale finance business. It helped the company to enhance its operational efficiency by eliminating data duplication, reducing paperwork, facilitating a seamless data flow for effective monitoring and control.
A recent scheme relies on a technology-led solution in both customer acquisition and stakeholder (distributors and developer) management. It has the ability to send out well-targeted propositions, provide more personal access to customers, lower turnaround time and provide more efficient service. It is expected to significantly impact the company’s ability to scale the size of its book, whilst also creating a USP, through its reliance on technology.
Innovation – The Key to Growth
The Piramal Group has successfully created industry benchmarks time and again by launching unique strategies and relying on both product and process innovations to gain a competitive edge.
In order to detect early warning signals, it created a unique asset monitoring model across its investments with the team monitoring each project on a regular basis. This includes conducting regular site visits for real estate projects, maintaining monthly MIS updates on the progress of each investment, ensuring collection of receivables, conducting regular project monitoring meetings with the clients and more.
The fund management business also brought certain unique and innovative strategies such as slum redevelopment (Mumbai Redevelopment Fund) or bulk buying of apartments (Apartment Fund). It has also translated this entrepreneurial mind-set into the introduction of multiple new products within its wholesale lending business over the years – from a ‘Flexi-LRD’ to the ‘Piramal Preferred Partner’ program. Recently, it set up the Emerging Corporate Lending team to target small and medium enterprise lending in order to access smaller corporates.
In its retail Housing Finance business, it introduced a unique business model – B2B2C – (business to developer to customer) which is a key differentiator. In this model, it has leveraged existing robust relationships with its developer partners combined with innovative product offerings such as:
SUPER Loans – A popular product that factors the future income potential after assessing the credit parameters for the retail loan to enable customers to purchase their ideal home.
AdvantAGE — Specially designed for parent-child wherein both can pay a higher EMI in the initial years when their income is higher. In the later years, when total family income is reduced, the customer can avail an option to pay lower EMIs factoring the revised family income.
Bridge — It caters to those customers who aspire to buy a new house by helping them with the down payment before selling their existing property.
Triumphant Moments
From winning awards and accolades for its wide scale of abilities, to firmly maintaining a bottom line that speaks for itself, PCHFL’s performance has been widely recognised by the industry. It has received several accolades, including Asia One: Global India 2017, Business Leader of the Year: Global Real Estate Congress 2017, Visionary in Real Estate Financing: NDTV Property Awards 2017, CXO of the year: Realty Plus 2018 and CEO of the year: 8th EPC World Awards.
Inspiring Generations to Come
The Piramal Group values of Knowledge, Action, Care and Impact guide PCHFL’s culture and are also personified by its purpose – ‘Doing Well and Doing Good’. In the same mould, Khushru would like to encourage the youth today to take a very long term view when starting out in their professional lives and careers. He says, “I have always believed that the most important advice that can be given to the younger generation is to be true to themselves; to not to act in haste and take the wrong path, to be ambitious but humble and to have the courage to say and do what they truly believe in, even if others try to discourage you. Stay true to your values, beliefs and remember the path is never easy. Believe in yourself, build a long term vision and work towards it consistently, passionately and with an overarching sense of purpose.”
Piramal Capital & Housing Finance: Financing Your Dreams of Growth
