With India breaching the 1 billion milestone for COVID vaccination, restrictions on travel and dine out are being lifted in most parts of the country. To add to it, the festive season mixed with the ongoing cricket fiesta with tournaments like IPL and ICC World Cup T20, has fuelled the long awaited buzz in the Indian markets.
According to a report by Dineout, restaurants in several cities are operating at twice the capacity they did compared to February 2021. This buzz in the market is an opportunity for restaurant owners to end their financial drought of more than 1.5 years but the increasing demands calls for some liquid financial support for the businesses so that they can capitalize on the opportunity. Traditionally, a loan from a bank would require a lot of financial documentation which most of the new restaurant owners would be lagging.
It is now for the growing acceptance of digitization and boom of fintech platforms in the country that these small restaurant owners can avail collateral free loans this festive season. One such growing player in the lending space, Indifi, informed that they have disbursed over 37000+ loans of which restaurants constitute approximately percent.
Indifi’s customers are both dine-in and delivery restaurants and now growing into cloud kitchens as well. The average loan size for this segment is Rs 4-5 lakhs and about 15 percent of the loan disbursals are to Tier 3 and 4 cities. Also, even with the restaurant business being a risky industry, 40 percent of the loans given to restaurants have been with vintage less than 2 years. This has largely been driven through Indifi’s ecosystem-based approach where the partnerships with leading tech aggregators like Swiggy and Zomato has supported the efforts to enable financing to creditworthy restaurants, it said in a press release.
Alok Mittal, CEO & Co-Founder of Indifi said; “The ongoing festive and cricket season is a great opportunity for these new restaurant business owners to capitalize on the long-awaited drought in the sector and we are glad that Indifi is helping in driving that change in their lives. In the coming future, we are looking to expand reach within existing partnerships, and build relations with new aggregators in this space. Restaurant business is beginning to pick up again, our focus will be to cater to new players in the sector” .
A major chunk of the loans disbursed by Indifi were used by the restaurant owners for renovation of their outlet(s) or for opening new outlets. The amount was also used for clearing off debts, making internal payments and for marketing the brand in the festive season, it added.
