Tata Capital to venture in home loan business by 2009

Tata Capital Limited a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Limited will soon be entering into the thriving home loan business by March 2009. This was disclosed by its Managing Director and CEO, Mr Praveen P Kadle. He said, “Although we will be a late entrant in this market, we see good business opportunities in offering home loans. We hope to start this by March next year”.

Tata Capital, is a non-banking finance company, started its operations in 2007. With this Tata Group made entry into a host of new financial services. Currently, the company has a capital of about Rs 2,000 crore and is offering suite of products across multiple financial domains—personal loans, car loans, distribution and broking, wealth management, SME Finance, capital markets, private equity and infrastructure finance.

Mr Kadle also informed by end-September Tata Capital will be launching its first private equity fund which will be targeting on opportunities in mid-sized companies. He added the size of the fund is yet to be finalized, there are indications that the initially fund size may be around $ 250 million. Company is also planning to launch a venture capital fund focusing on the technology space (information technology/telecom).

At present Tata Capital balance sheet is around Rs 4,000 crore. On being enquired whether the company will be looking at inorganic growth, Mr Kadle said that most of the opportunities here were expensive. He said, “Indian valuations are expensive. Inorganic growth may not be attractive, but that does not mean we will not look at inorganic growth”.

Moreover, Tata Capital will soon be venturing into insurance broking. “A subsidiary of Tata Motors has got license for insurance broking from IRDA. This company would eventually come under Tata Capital. We will also get into commodities broking soon”, Mr Kadle said.

On being enquired whether Tata Capital is consider listing of its shares in the coming months, Mr Kadle inforemed that the company was not looking at listing now.