 "Aadhar Housing Finance targets doubling loan book to Rs 2,000 cr")
Low income segment housing financer Aadhar Housing Finance is targetting to more than double its loan book size to Rs 2,000 crore during the current fiscal.
During the last financial year, its loan book stood at about Rs 972 crore. At the end of July 2015, Aadhar had already clocked Rs 1,115 crore in advancements, company's CEO Deo Shankar Tripathi told Business Standard here.
In Uttar Pradesh, Aadhar's loan book stands at over Rs 480 crore at present. "The contribution of UP to our total business is expected to remain above 30 percent in the current fiscal as well," he added.
With a current branch network of 70, Aadhar covers over 300 locations pan-India spread over nine states. By March 2016, it is aiming to ramp up its branch network to 102 spanning 13 states.
He said there was massive untapped housing finance potential in UP, especially in the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and Low Income Group (LIG) space.
"The proposal to develop 13 Smart Cities in UP would further boost the housing sector and we are keen to capitalise on this development," he replied to a query.
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Of the proposal to set up 100 Smart Cities in India, UP has got the lion's share of 13 cities, including Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Aligarh, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Bareilly, Agra, Rampur, Varanasi, Jhansi, Allahabad, and Kanpur.
Meanwhile, UP is estimated to be facing shortage of nearly 2.5 million housing units, especially in the low end of the pyramid. The situation has arisen due to large scale migration of people to urban and semi urban centres in search of livelihood.
According to a National Housing Board (NHB) report in March 2013, India was facing shortage of over 18 million and 42 million housing units in urban and rural areas respectively.
The Centre has estimated that by 2022, the country would be facing deficit of almost 100 million dwelling units. This would require massive scale up on the supply side.
Aadhar was established by Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) Group. IFC, a member of the World Bank, holds 20% equity in the joint venture.