No cash, all digital: Vaya Finserv's strategy for microfinance game

Vikram Akula is the non-executive chairperson and co-promoter of the company

Vikram Akula, once the poster boy of India’s microfinance sector, is making a comeback with investments in Vaya Finserv in 2014 almost six years after he left SKS Microfinance.

Akula isn’t involved in daily management at Vaya but the company has built more than a Rs 1000-crore portfolio in five years. Akula is its non-executive chairperson and co-promoter.

A group of corporate professionals from diverse backgrounds--micro financiers like Akula, technocrats, bankers and management experts--started Vaya in 2014 as a tech-enabled banking correspondent company. In 2017, the company became a non-banking finance, microfinance (NBFC-MFI).

In a sector heavily dependent on cash, Vaya has not