Theme Page 26th Annual Report
Y Is about being Young in spirit
Last year we published a silver jubilee tribute to Shri H. T. Parekh called “Moments of Joy”.
In this compact Coffee Table Book, we showcased rural borrowers whose Lives have changed because of the enormous as pi rational impact of small ticket mortgage finance and home ownership.
This book, ‘Moments of Joy’, was a way of reminding all of us about a vision which our founder set for us. It was a vision which seemed Utopian and far-fetched. At that time, many people thought that Indians were too accustomed to doles and freebies and so, the concept of mortgage loans for housing would never take off. The legal framework was unfriendly; processes and systems were not in place. Hence, people felt that borrowers would choose the dishonest option and renege on their loan repayments. But, it was the sheer conviction of one man who, at the young age of 66 (after his retirement as Chairman of ICICI Ltd.), successfully Launched HDFCand GRUH.
Today both institutions have forged many trend-setting trails. And we pay tribute to this ‘young and youthful mind’ which refused to be overwhelmed by the odds.
As you see excerpts from the book in this year’s annual report, we invite you to recall the vision and determination of a man who changed the face of home ownership in India.
Y IS THE HALLMARK OF A YOUTHFUL NEW GENERATION
In developed countries, researchers and trend watchers are paid large sums of money to identify and report on emerging ‘demographic cohorts’. This term refers to groups of people and their common defining characteristics. Trend watchers classify such groups with special tags such as ‘baby boomers’, ‘millennials’, “Gen-X”, ‘Gen-Y”, and soon.
A large number of marketing companies, entertainment channels, media and even aspiring Presidential candidates make use of this demographic data to sharpen their agenda and appeals by tuning in to ‘generation change’.
Generation-Y is a youthful new generation which constitutes the bulwark of GRUH’s customer base.
Co-incidentally, Y is also the 25th letter in the English alphabet. It has a Lot of meaning and significance for GRUH at this juncture, since we have just completed 25 years of commitment to our valued constituency of stakeholders.
We invite you to explore the big Y behind GRUH’s consistent, efficient growth, even as we re-dedicate our youthful energies to newer, horizon-stretching aspirations.
Y IS ALL ABOUT YOUNG INDIA'S POTENTIAL
As part of the process of Learning and knowledge-capture Last year, we travelled to many locations and interviewed a wide cross-section of GRUH borrowers. We took photographs. We recorded opinions. We tracked what people were doing and how their standards had improved after they crossed the threshold into a home of their own.
Many of these people were twenty-somethings for whom a home had actually become the first step towards fuelling their upwardly mobile aspirations.
The one common thing about all these people is that they believed in themselves. They seemed to have amazing confidence in their own individual capacity to bring about change. Some of them were secondary school literates; some freshly minted graduates in their first job. Some were drop-outs who had to give up their studies and strike out on their own. These are the ‘real India’. They are the people who constitute India’s huge informal sector and who will fuel service-driven growth in future. They run green grocery businesses, tiffin (meal) services, kerbside food (paani-puri stalls) or even beauty parlours and a chain of ‘paan-bidi’ (betel leaf and tobacco) stores. They provide essential transportation in their tiny rickshaws. They could be women rolling out papads (snacks) in their co-operative venture. They may even be lowly paid agricultural labourers. But they have one thing in common:
They are part of the GRUH family. They are part of the real India and they represent an emerging demographic dividend.
Y2K NOW REPRESENTS THE NEW MILLENNIALS
For us at GRUH, Y2K and beyond is all about the huge opportunity that Lies untapped in India’s small towns and villages. There are many reasons why GRUH is uniquely positioned to tap into this potential. The first is the unique distribution channel and outreach programme which GRUH has tested and perfected over the years. This third party channel is the GRA (GRUH Referral Associate). GRAs are trained to understand borrower needs. They spread the cult of home ownership and co-ordinate up to the point of sourcing the Loan. Thereafter the GRUH team takes over at the sensitive stages of credit, legal and technical evaluations, loan approval and disbursement. GRAs have become a powerful marketing tool and over 50 % of total disbursements now come from the GRA channel.
OUTREACH
In tandem with the GRA model, GRUH has developed a robust outreach programme. It is a nucleus for collecting installments and also providing customer services like enquiry handling, file opening, disbursement and loan servicing.
Complementing the home-grown distribution model are three vital marketing ingredients: Processes, Products and Methodologies.
GRUH has become a learning organisation with customised mechanisms for need evaluation, efficient processing and localised marketing of each loan product.
The proprietary Credit Score Methodology enables GRUH to PRICE each loan efficiently: offering fine-tuned interest rates.
Insurance is proactively used as a risk mitigator and collateral for the loan. Life insurance has been encouraged for its valuable role in covering the life of the principal borrower. It thus works as a fall-back and a marketing tool to actualise the potential for mortgage finance and home ownership in informal sectors and rural markets.
