DBS Bank India, the local arm of global bank DBS, is eyeing an SME loan book of $ 1 billion by the end of December 2025, Divyesh Dalal – MD & Head- Global Transaction Services, has said.
DBS India’s SME book —primarily built digitally—is currently at about ₹ 5,000 crore, growing at a CAGR of 40 per cent over the last three years.
“Our SME loan book has started growing only in the last three years. We have not spent a decade growing this loan book. This is all in the last three years and we started when Covid-19 was there”, Dalal told BusinessLine in an interview.
- Read: DBS Bank India to scale up retail and SME loan book
“SME is pivotal to our growth in India. The fact that we acquired a bank (Lakshmi Vilas Bank) in Nov 2020, the fact that we keep investing in technology, the fact that we keep on integrating ERPs like Tally, these are all evidences we clearly believe that there is big play for us in the SME sector”.
Dalal also expressed confidence that DBS Bank India would sustain the 40 per cent growth rates in its SME book in the coming days.
“As the loan book grows, on a larger book if we grow 40 percent it would be phenomenal. We would love to do even more. We are atleast confident that we would be able to achieve the same rate (40%) of growth. We will be able to hold on to these rates for sure. It will be big stretch to do 50-60%”, he said.
Dalal sees supply chain financing as the biggest growth driver for the SME book. “Our supply chain finance book will help us achieve deeper penetration among SMEs. Currently there are 4000-5000 SME customers who are availing supply chain financing from us”.
DBS India also plans to leverage data in a bigger way to provide products and services to SME customers more effectively to meet their unmet needs, he said.
Going forward, DBS Bank India is also looking to bring “Instant Loan” facility —a product already provided by the bank in Singapore—to India to benefit SMEs here, Dalal added.
Currently, DBS Bank India partners with NBFCs for co-lending initiatives. “Through these partnerships, our aim is not only to expand our customer base but also to provide banking products that are beyond the offerings of NBFCs, such as Letter of Credit (LC), bank guarantees, and cross-border forex solutions,” Dalal said.
Asked to spell out the focus areas for DBS Bank India in the coming days, Dalal said that the bank would keep investing in digital, significantly increasing the number of partnerships not only for acquiring customers but getting data to identify what’s good or bad in terms of lending and leverage bank’s own supply chain database to lend more for same trade transactions (for post-shipment how can we provide pre-shipment financing).
On the ongoing partnership with ONDC, Dalal said that it was an important play for the bank as it would help in customer acquisition and building a granular book on the liability and asset side.