At a time when lenders are concerned about the non-performing assets (NPAs) in their financial statements, an Ahmedabad-based firm has come up with an online solution to assist lenders for quicker realisation from the NPAs.
Atishya Group of Ahmedabad will make a national launch on Friday of NPAsource.com, an exclusive portal to address the issues pertaining to NPAs. The portal, www.npasource.com would act as an interface between lenders, borrowers and investors.
The first of its kind portal for the NPAs, would become instrumental in reducing NPAs for lenders by linking them with prospective investors. Company officials informed that the portal would also help to revive sick units or industry by infusing required capital through global investors.
"Our aim is to help lenders to upload and update details of their NPAs online on our portal. Investors from across the world would get access to these details and on that basis they would choose an NPA for their investment. The borrowers would also benefit by way of settling their dues with lenders by realigning finances," said Devendra Jain, director, Atishya Technologies Pvt Ltd.
Initially, the portal would be free-to-access for all. Going forward the company intends to make it a subscription-based service for the borrowers and investors, while lenders including banks and financial institutions would continue to enjoy free access to the portal.
Company is understood to be in talks with couple of nationalised banks in India to share details of their respective NPAs. "This platform would be helpful for putting up funding requirements, joint ventures, sale of assets, mergers and acquisitions. We would also provide help from facilitators," said a company official.
High NPAs have been major concern for the lenders. According to industry statistics, NPAs among nationalised and private sector banks including foreign banks stood at Rs 68,326 crore during 2008-09, which rose to Rs 81,810 crore in 2009-10.
"Global economic factors are causing NPAs to remain persistently high. In past three years, the NPAs have been rising at a rate of over 10 per cent. This portal would help lenders to avoid making losses on NPAs," said Jain, who is also a chartered accountant.
So far there had been no common platform for the NPAs that would provide interface between borrowers, lenders and investors who are interested in realigning finances of the borrowers for their mutual benefits. The company has laid out ambitious plans to offer NPAs from other countries after successful implementation in the domestic market.
