Big Bazaar to sell financial products soon
Big Bazaar, which sells staples to consumer durables, is now all set to sell financial products.
Banking on the popularity of Big Bazaar, Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani is planning to sell financial products – from loans to insurance – in a store-in-store format. On offer will be car loans, home loans, property loans, gold loans, life insurance, mutual funds, wealth management and broking services.
The company is planning to launch 100 such branches by March next year, with a target to disburse Rs. 1,000 crore of secured loans this fiscal and service over 1 lakh customers in the first year itself.
Future Group already offers consumer durables loans from the stores and has tied up with TransUnion and Credit Information Bureau for on-the-spot customer scoring so that loans can be sanctioned faster.
“What we have learnt in our business is that we need permanency. This will be in our stores, for our customers it’s an additional facility,” said Biyani.
Though the concept is new in India, this model has seen success abroad. Global retailer Walmart alone has over 1000 such centres in their stores. But to duplicate this model in India will have its challenges, including the possibility of mis-selling or lack of a proper background check of the customer.
“The key thing is for businesses like loans against property it cannot be done across the counter. The verification itself takes 4-5 days. In principle though it can be done,” said V Vaidyanathan, vice-chairman & MD, Future Capital.
Although an ambitious project, the real challenge for Future Capital will be to build a brand in the financial services space, like it has done with Big Bazaar, and ensure that the products and services offered are good.
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