Bajaj Finance, the country’s largest consumer durable finance provider, plans to enter micro finance segment by 2025, extending its focus beyond the middle class, Sanjiv Bajaj, Chairman & Managing Director Bajaj Finserv has said.

Currently, Bajaj Finserv, which is the holding group company for all the financial services businesses of the Bajaj Group, holds 52.49 per cent equity stake in Bajaj Finance.

“We do plan in the next couple of years to get into microfinance segment. We are now doing all branded two wheelers now. In the next 12 months we will enter the four wheeler (financing) space. In FY25, we will enter rural tractor space and at some point then microfinance as well,” Bajaj said at the All India Management Association’s 8th National Leadership Conclave in the capital on Tuesday.

He was responding to a query from Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, Hero Enterprise, who was moderating the session. Munjal wanted to know whether Bajaj Finance was looking at a new audience (beyond the middle class) or whether it saw for itself enough room to continue to grow in middle India.

Bajaj said few large companies or groups that have significant access to customers (Reliance is one of them) have advantage of ready customer base, but building the right set of capabilities to manufacture financial products and sell them takes time.

“ We at Bajaj Finance are now at AUM of ₹ 2.5-lakh crore and still less than 2 per cent of banking sector. The top 100 cities will see intense competition as some of the new players get started. But the opportunity is beyond that and here to stay”, Bajaj added.

He highlighted that Bajaj Finance has created capabilities where it can now give a decision on a loan application in 30 seconds after analysing nearly 400 variables of a prospective loan customer.

Bajaj Finance, which has presence in 1,50,000 stores across the country, has enabled as many as 15-17 million Indians enter the formal financial system in the last four years.

Bajaj noted that most of India’s growth is funded currently by foreign capital.