Jairam Sridharan joins Piramal Enterprises; to lead consumer finance biz

Former chief financial officer (CFO) of Axis Bank, Jairam Sridharan, has joined Piramal Enterprises as chief executive officer (CEO) of its consumer finance business.

Commenting on the appointment, Anand Piramal, Executive Director, Piramal Group said, "We are delighted to welcome Jairam Sridharan. Jairam not only has rich experience in building a large retail finance business but also has deep knowledge of technology and analytics, a combination that positions us well as we build a business of the future."

Anand Piramal also added that the enterprise is looking at good growth opportunities in the consumer and small business financing segments. "Our hope is to create a world class new age AI-led lending business that helps fuels the growth of small businesses and fulfils the aspiration of Indian consumers. We believe greatly in India’s financial services story, both on the wholesale and retail side, and this foray helps us build a more innovative, diversified and complete financial services conglomerate," said Piramal.

Sridharan joined Axis Bank in June 2010 and was elevated to CFO in October 2015. At Axis Bank he worked in payments businesses comprising retail lending products, cards business and the agriculture and rural lending business. Before joining Axis Bank, Jairam worked with Capital One Financial, as head of the ‘New to Credit’ card acquisitions. He started his career at ICICI Bank, where he headed the ‘business intelligence unit’ and developed the analytical capabilities of the bank.

With over two decades of experience, Sridharan is a graduate from IIT Delhi and holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Calcutta.

Outlining growth priorities for financial services Piramal Enterprises said it would enter retail lending and would explore in-organic growth opportunities. While expanding customer segment and geographic reach, it will target self-employed customers for higher yields and better fee income and tap tier 2 and 3 cities. It will leverage technology to reducing costs by centralising operating model and using − Analytics-driven underwriting which is based on behavior-driven models.

As on March 31, 2019, the financial services business portfolio stood at Rs 56,624 crore, of which real estate financing (construction finance, mezzanine, and lease rent discounting) constituted around 72 per cent. Of this, Rs 38,518 crore is attributable to PCHFL. The lending business of the group started off with mezzanine financing and has gradually moved towards more of construction finance.