TS Industrial Health Clinic Scouts for software to me made online

Hyderabad: The Telangana Industrial Health Clinic Limited (TIHCL), the State supported fintech set up to help sick industries revive, will start lending soft loans from April. It has now called vendors for software to support its activities. This will be finalised shortly. “We are assessing the technology with support from IDRBT. There are a few vendors who can supply that. We will finalise the module to be used. We need this as our services will be online,” said its adviser B Yerram Raju.

TIHCL got the RBI nod to operate as an NBFC in the first week of January. It then indicated it would look to start its core operations, which includes providing financial assistance to micro and small enterprises that are have turned sick, around mid-February.

TIHCL’s offerings include diagnostics of non-willful defaulters, techno economic viability studies, handholding, monitoring and mentoring, preventing enterprises from getting sick and consultancy services.

In the meantime, TIHCL will look to do diagnostics of some sick companies. It implies it will revisit the project and find the lacunae that are resulting in poor performance of the enterprises. It is also getting cases referred by the banks for diagnostic services. It will make the assessments and share the same with the concerned enterprises as well with banks for corrective measures. It has already brought some incipiently sick and sick enterprises back on the track through its consultancy and advocacy services, according to Raju.

Use of Sarfesi Act provisions by the banks to recover loans has been the key concern of sick enterprises. TIHCL has taken up these with the respective banks and got the implementation of Sarfesi reversed. In some cases, it has also corresponded with Government Departments to get the pending dues cleared to ensure that accounts do not become NPAs, he revealed.

TIHCL will not deal with secondary steel and mining related enterprises as the financial requirements in these sectors for revival will be large. “We want to provide small assistance to more enterprises and vice-versa,” Raju said adding that TIHCL will give upto 25 per cent of the revival package sanctioned by the banks as margin money. This loan recovery will be done by the bank along with the loan that it extends and channels TIHCL’s proportionate share back to it.

It will soon enter into a memorandum of understanding with SBI, Andhra Bank, SIDBI, Canara Bank, which are the major lenders to small and micro enterprises. TIHCL, the first State sponsored NBFC in Telangana with the State contributing Rs10 crore towards equity, has plans to create a Rs 100 crore corpus.