Riding The Consumer Boom

Indiabulls Ventures has made the most of the opportunities in consumer finance.

- Mahesh Nayak

Sameer Gehlaut, Chairman of Indiabulls Group, has been a risk taker. After his foray into stock broking in 2000, Gehlaut has ventured into uncertain waters – be it real estate, housing finance or the power business. It was, therefore, not surprising when he took a call to enter the consumer finance space. Some 18 months ago, Gehlaut chose to dabble in the unsecured lending business by providing personal loans and business loans. The effort has paid off, adding substantially to the bottom line of the group. The consolidated profit reported by Indiabulls Ventures (IVL) in the first half of FY2018, till September 30 2017, is more than the profit recorded by the company in the entire last fiscal.

Its performance has not gone unnoticed with the market rewarding the company. The market capitalisation of the group has surged almost 13 times in the past year. In fact, IVL is among the highest gaining stocks in the period on domestic bourses. Indeed, the average IVL market cap jumped 482 per cent to ₹4,072 crore in the review period for the BT500 rankings (October 2016 to September 2017). The rise also helped IVL enter the list of top 500 companies for the first time. From a rank of 739 last year, IVL jumped 379 places to 360 in the market cap pecking order.