Australia headquartered non-banking finance company Pepper Money is looking to set up a payments and lending business in India and is planning to apply for a nonbanking financial services licence here in the next year or so.
Speaking with ET, Pepper Global Group CEO Mike Culhane said that the parent company has committed $150 million into the India business with the aim to address financial requirements of Indian consumers across small towns and cities in the country.
“I believe there is a massive head room to grow in India, but we will be happy with a modest 500,000 customer base here in the short term, a small but engaged base should be a good starting point,” Culhane said.
While Pepper started operations in Australia, it expanded into multiple geographies. It runs a full service bank in South Korea, runs lending operations in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and other countries.
Currently the company manages an AUM of almost $80 billion across multiple geographies.
Currently the company which is listed in Australia has a market cap of $609 million.
With Abhishek Kothari as its CEO for the India business, Pepper Money India is looking to launch its first product in Indore and Lucknow.
The company will offer a prepaid card to its users and any expenses incurred on the card will be backed by cashback and rewards.
Kothari explained that he intends to study the spending pattern of his users and eventually open up credit as an offering for the right set of users. In the next six to twelve months, Pepper Money India should be able to offer credit to its users, he added.
Culhane said that he did not intend to build any hard and fast rules around whom to offer credit, but eventually the idea is to look at spending and consumption data on the basis of which credit will be rolled out.
