No Changes Due To The Lockdown, Thanks To Cloud

Manoj Viswanathan, Director & CEO, Home First Finance, discusses the business scenario of affordable housing finance, technology up-gradation and geographical expansion:

Manoj Agrawal, Ravi Lalvani: What is the impact of the lockdown on your business?

Manoj Viswanathan: A little background first. Home First Finance is a 10-year-old company, and we are in the business of providing affordable housing finance. Our customers are salaried and self-employed, and they belong to the middle class and most of them are buying their first homes.

Covid has impacted our business and customers. However, our customers are quite resilient to disruptions like covid; they were confused during April and May, but from June onwards, most of them have gone back to their respective jobs or businesses and they are regularly paying their EMIs. We had low business in April-May, but from October onwards, we are expecting to reach 80% of the pre-covid levels. In the initial period, some of our customers have availed moratorium because their business and income got impacted. In September, 95% of our customers came back to us, and they said that they do not want to avail of the moratorium and wanted to pay their regular EMIs.

Mumbai, Delhi, and Pune were the hotspots of the pandemic, so these cities were most impacted. From a geographic perspective, there is a uniform demand from the rest of the cities. We mostly get business from the periphery areas of the cities because the central parts are expensive areas.

Have you launched any new products during this period?