This article is from the public number: Chi like nets (ID : passagegroup) , author: SURVEYING, FIG title: Oriental IC
There are fewer and fewer people patronizing the Juyuan Hotel on Baiji Road, Bangalore, India. Half a year ago, because of the patronage of the domestic cash loan team, every night, the private rooms here were full.
“I heard that some Chinese restaurants have closed down.” Wang Xing (pseudonym) told Zhixiang.com that after the visa suspension in India, most Chinese people could not enter, business was much less, and 80% of Bangalore’s companies were also open. Home office model.
As of March 19, the number of confirmed cases of new crown pneumonia in India rose to 173. That night, the Indian News and Information Agency announced that from March 22 to 29, all international commercial passenger flights are prohibited from entering the country. For the first time, Prime Minister Modi issued a national television speech on India ’s new crown epidemic, calling on citizens to reduce outing and self-isolation.
For cash loan practitioners, India is the hottest market in 2019. The epidemic did not press the pause button for this industry, but the suspension of navigation, visa issues, and the explosion of YES Bank, India’s fourth largest private bank, seem to be far from their spring.
Bangalore, photo courtesy of interviewees, same below
Emergency rescue week
On March 5th, YES Bank was taken over by the Bank of India, Liu Ming (a pseudonym) began the continuous rotation, and worked remotely with Indian colleagues in the country to work overtime, until a week later, Liu Ming did not have some time to talk about this rare history of India’s mutual gold Encounter.
“A Chinese colleague was on duty in India during the Spring Festival. Another colleague returned just one day before the visa was suspended. Others were still working remotely in China.” He told Zhixiang.com that when the colleague landed in India, I also quarantined at home for 14 days.
Fortunately, two Chinese colleagues returned to India. This thunderstorm froze the funds of cash loan players’ lending and returning money, which made many Chinese caught by surprise.
A cash loan practitioner revealed to Zhixiang.com that the funds of head players in YES Bank may exceed 100 million, and 80% of Chinese players connect to bank lending and return through the three-party payment service provider Razorpay. Liu Ming’s company alone has more than 10 million yuan of funds frozen in the YES Bank.
When I heard that the funds were frozen, Liu Ming started working with colleagues in India overnight, opened several payment company accounts, and activated the bank API (application program interface) to connect directly. “Although the experience of directly connecting with the bank API is worse, there is no way. After all, the bank is a traditional company technology is worse.”
At present, the company is most concerned about repayment, and can only keep sending text messages to users to remind them to change the repayment method. “All we can do is see the tricks,” Liu Ming was helpless.
Night scenes of Indian streets
YES Bank is a “black swan incident”. Because YES Bank ranks fourth among private banks in India and tenth among national banks, according to estimates by Indian banking professionals, its total asset size can be benchmarked against domestic Minsheng Bank or CITIC Bank. No one expected that such a large bank would explode.
In addition, YES Bank is well-known in the Indian banking industry for its ability to innovate in business, and its expansion is radical. It is deeply involved with the Fintech industry in India.
According to data from the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), 20 of the 32 three-party payment service providers are connected to YES Bank, such as Phonepe, Razorpay, Paytm, and Cashfree. Of the 1.3 billion UPI transactions in India in January 2020, UPI transactions from YES Bank accounted for 40%.
Liu Ming told Zhixiang.com that YES Bank’s IT docking technology is the strongest among Indian banks. The mainstream payment service companies in the market use its technology and deposit funds in YES Bank.
PhonePe’s underlying technology comes from YES Bank, which was most affected by this thunderstorm. However, because Razorpay’s backend and product experience are relatively friendly, most Chinese cash loan players have also accessed Razorpay. “We also use Razorpay because users vote with their feet, and its repayment rate is higher than other channels,” Liu Ming added.
Can the money in the YES Bank account be transferred out? Liu Ming believes that it can only wait for the thaw and the central bank’s restructuring plan. On March 17, the central bank held a press conference to announce the reorganization plan and decided to implement a financing rescue plan in two phases.
Currently, Razorpay has announced to cash-loan companies with account balances below 1 million yuan. The strategy is to first thaw small customers so that they can continue to lend with confidence and maintain market vitality. It is understood that most companies have a capital scale of one or two million yuan.
According to Liu Ming, Razorpay currently has 7 NBFC (non-bank financial institution) licenses that have not been unfrozen. Due to the large amount involved, the former is unable to make a profit.
lucky stayer
“There are only one-fifth of the people left on the street,” Wang Xing told Zhixiang. Affected by the epidemic, players who want to do it this year seem to see no hope.
Wang Xing has been staying in Bangalore during the Spring Festival. As of March 19, there have been 14 confirmed cases in Karnataka, where Bangalore is located. He decided to let the company employees go home to work. In order to ensure efficiency, he also formulated a management plan for hourly communication and workload index assessment.
Wang Xing was one of the first to come to India to examine the cash loan market. His company did not deposit in YES Bank, and this time it was not affected by the YES Bank explosion.
“A couple of friends came to India to inspect India. The company has already bought them. They plan to start construction after the New Year’s Eve. As a result, the visa is suspended and they cannot return.
Wang Xing said that many players are preparing to enter India after the Spring Festival, but the epidemic broke out before the Spring Festival. The Chinese want to start a company and form a team in India, but if they can’t get through, they can’t complete the various tasks of forming a team, such as interviews, assessments, management, etc. These must be done in person in India.
In the middle of last year, Wang Xing analyzed the size of India’s cash loan market. India has 220 million people eligible for loans, of which 70 million are active in the loan market. The consumption cycle of Indian mobile Internet users is similar to that of China from 2014 to 2015, but its traditional financial service coverage for the people is relatively low.
“China’s Internet started early, and what works in the Chinese market can be borrowed from India and then localized according to India’s situation. If it works, it is a great opportunity,” said Wang Xing. “2018 At the end of the year, I started to come to India to see the market. At that time, no one knew the Indian market and felt that it was a poor and backward place. I called a very good friend to join the company.
Wang Xing, who has no capital, can only use his own money to support the team. By June 2019, the market started to heat up slightly and began to contact some investors, but no one dared to bet on the Indian market. “It took almost a million dollars, and I can’t keep it up.”
I really felt the heat of the Indian cash loan market in October. Many people want to enter the cash loan market and fly over from China to inspect the market in batches.
At this time, Wang Xing’s company also welcomed new investors. “On the first meeting, it was negotiated. From the financing process and speed, you can see the market is hot.” He also According to Zhixiang.com, in March this year, investors who had previously contacted turned back to him and wanted to find him.Seek new cooperation.
A Chinese presses the shutter on the mansion in Mumbai, India’s richest man
Wang Xing predicts that next, the life cycle of the entire Indian cash loan market will be 1-2 years. Prior to entering the Indian cash lending market, he was a manager at China Internet Finance Corporation.
The cash loan industry relies on the itinerary of user loans, and the cycle of borrowing new money and returning old money is constantly circulating. When there are more and more players in the market, users cannot afford too high debt, and the supply and loan will burst into a certain number of times. Now that new players cannot enter, the life cycle of the entire industry has been extended accordingly.
He explained that the financial life cycle of a cash loan customer in India is about 3-6 months. Because the business is periodic, the rate of consuming users is much faster than that of new users. When all users in the market have been developed, there will be no new users.
Someone started a crisis business
In the past, the Wenzhou gang went crazy in the sea circle and planned to enter the Indian cash loan market with abundant funds after the Spring Festival.
However, the advent of the epidemic has caught almost every Chinese who has gone overseas, and seems to be pouring cold water on those who are anxious to enter the Indian cash loan market.
Someone thought of the Party B service company who was in the middle of the inspection of the market. Some Chinese companies handed over the Indian business to Party B’s operating company.
“It is now equivalent to the window period, and it cannot be wasted. If you wait to lift the ban with other people to enter the Indian market, then the market environment will be different.” Liu Ming explained to Zhixiang.
It happens that Party B’s service company also started to change during the epidemic, and launched online courses to make preliminary preparations for players who have not yet entered the venue, such as registering the company first, following the contract process, and so on. But practitioners remindAfter the hot-selling operation, many companies came in, so be careful to identify.
Zixiang.com was informed of a “pit-proof guide” compiled by industry insiders, which lists the “pits” implicit in the cash loan industry. After being trapped, the consulting company did not cooperate with the transfer of shareholders and directors after helping the company register, the payment company had a low rate of return, the service matching fee was high, the flow company’s balance consumption was fraudulent, etc.
These companies cover the upstream and downstream of cash loans, and are distributed in cities such as Mumbai, Gurgaon, and Noida. Chinese companies that have just entered the market have paid a lot of “tuition fees.”
Due to the double impact of the epidemic and bank thunderstorms, some cash loan players began to shrink their lending scales to survive carefully in order to maintain cash flow. Considering the spread of the epidemic, Liu Ming decided to let employees who performed better or could not return to work in the company, and began experimenting with working from home, but the results were not satisfactory.
Note: The text of respondents per capita as a pseudonym, the author: SURVEYING, Editor: Li Meng