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Blackstone invests Rs. 150 cr in Fino

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: Private equity firm Blackstone has invested Rs 150 crore in Mumbai-based Fino for a significant minority stake. Fino is a provider of integrated technology solutions and physical network to enable financial inclusion in India.

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Fino works with most of the leading banks in the country across a comprehensive product suite - saving bank accounts, recurring deposits, loan products, remittances, insurance products, government subsidies disbursement, among others, said a press release.

The company has enrolled more than 35 million customers and plans to double its customer base in the next couple of years, it added.

Manish Khera, chief executive officer of Fino Limited, said the company has done well and the outlook is even stronger with government focus of using Business Correspondent channel for cash subsidies and RBI’s drive to achieve total financial inclusion.

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“We are quite excited to partner with Blackstone. Fino is a pioneer in the financial inclusion space and we plan to extensively leverage Blackstone’s global expertise of scaling up and transforming businesses,” he said.

Rishi Gupta, chief financial officer of FINO, said the funds would primarily be utilized towards funding overall growth of the company and to meet long-term capital requirements.

“With Blackstone joining our shareholder group and the Board, we look forward to more exciting time ahead and hope to contribute even better and bigger to the financial inclusion initiative, ” he added.

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Fino is headquartered in Mumbai and employs over 2500 employees and 20000 business correspondent agents spread across 239 offices.

Akhil Gupta, chairman and managing director of Blackstone Advisors India Private Limited, said India has a significantly high number of financially excluded households — more than 100 million — with an exclusion rate of over 50 per cent.

“The exclusion is much more prevalent in the rural areas. For sustainable and inclusive growth, India needs to extend basic utilities like financial services to the excluded population,” he added.