Buying a new or used commercial vehicle gets even easier? Here's what ICICI Bank has done

To strengthen commercial vehicle sales, private lender ICICI Bank on Wednesday, inked a deal with IndoStar Capital Finance Limited (IndoStar) to finance small and medium fleet owners to purchase used and new commercial vehicles (CV). Such would be first-of-its-kind lending programme in the country between a commercial bank and an NBFC to finance commercial vehicles.

Ravi Narayanan, Head - Secured Assets, ICICI Bank said, “ICICI Bank has played a key role in the development of transportation infrastructure in India since inception. In keeping with this legacy, we are delighted to partner with IndoStar to bring seamless credit to owners of small and medium fleets and contribute to the infrastructure growth story of the country. This partnership will leverage upon the Bank’s efficient lending mechanism and IndoStar’s reach in the smaller pockets of the country to make credit accessible for a larger set of people. With this, we will have a wider presence across the country to help entrepreneurs buy used and new commercial vehicles.”

While, R. Sridhar, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, IndoStar said, “We at IndoStar are delighted and humbled to work with an institution like ICICI Bank and being the first NBFC – to get into an arrangement of this nature with ICICI Bank. This combines the balance sheet strength of the bank with our ability to reach out to the underserved CV financing customers across the country’s smaller towns. This is a partnership of domain experience, nimbleness and reach with strength and size.”

With the new partnership, IndoStar will originate and service the customers through the entire loan life-cycle including sourcing, documentation, collection and loan servicing. ICICI Bank will provide funding to these customers, who have so far limited access to organised credit.

Notably, IndoStar, which has developed a niche in financing used commercial vehicles, will originate customers in tier 2, 3, 4 cities where it has branch network. Cities include centres like Coimbatore, Salem, Tirunelveli, Kurnool, Calicut, Trivandrum, Jabalpur, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jodhpur, Alwar and Meerut among others. The NBFC has a wide branch network of 322 branches.