Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company is the financial services arm of the 125-year-old Murugappa Group, and it has spent over four decades turning a simple vehicle-financing operation into one of India’s largest and most diversified non-banking lenders. It was built on a recurring approach: start with a deep, often rural, customer relationship in vehicle finance, then use that branch network, local knowledge, and underwriting data to cross-sell a widening circle of secured and unsecured loans to the same self-employed and small-business customers. That is how a company that began financing trucks now also funds homes, small factories, consumer gadgets, and gold, serving more than 50 lakh customers through over 1,700 branches, nearly nine out of ten of which sit in Tier-III towns and beyond.
Business segments
Seven lending engines, all anchored by a four-decade-old vehicle-finance franchise that provides the customer relationships, branch network, and data that the newer businesses are built on.
1. Vehicle Finance: the foundation that everything else is built on
A four-decade-old lending franchise that finances the vehicles India moves on - from trucks and tractors to cars and two-wheelers - and provides the customer base, branch network, and credit data that feed the company’s other businesses.
- The largest and oldest engine - with assets under management of ₹1,19,558 crore, it accounts for 53% of the company’s total loan book and serves over 32 lakh customers, giving it the scale to support a nationwide branch network of 1,761 locations.
- A deliberately broad portfolio - the book is spread across used vehicles (27%), light commercial vehicles (18%), multi-utility vehicles and cars (26% combined), heavy commercial vehicles, two-wheelers, construction equipment, tractors, and three-wheelers, so no single vehicle type dominates the risk.
- Deep relationships with manufacturers and dealers - long-standing ties with original equipment manufacturers like Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland, and John Deere give it a steady flow of customers at the point of vehicle sale.
- A digital marketplace, not just a lender - its Gaadi Bazaar platform is a used-vehicle marketplace that attracts over 19 lakh unique visitors a month, lists more than 10,500 new vehicles monthly, and sells over 6,000 vehicles a month, creating a self-reinforcing loop of vehicle buyers who also need financing.
- Co-lending expands reach without stretching capital - a co-lending programme with banks, launched in 2020, lets Chola serve top-of-pyramid customers in construction equipment and heavy commercial vehicles while sharing the funding burden with partner banks.
2. Loan Against Property: the second engine, built on the same branch map
A secured lending business that lets small-business owners borrow against their own homes or commercial property, using the same branch network and underwriting skills developed in vehicle finance.
- A business of self-employed borrowers - 97% of its customers are self-employed non-professionals such as traders and small manufacturers, with an average loan size of about ₹52 lakh, and more than three-quarters of the book is backed by self-occupied residential property.
- Conservative lending from the start - the average loan-to-value ratio at origination is kept around 50%, meaning the borrower has significant skin in the game and the lender has a wide cushion if property values fall.
- Branch-sharing keeps costs low - of its 814 branches, 804 are co-located with vehicle-finance branches, and additional branches from other business lines are also co-located with VF, so the business expands into new geographies without bearing the full cost of a standalone network.
- Rural push is deliberate - 76% of branches are in rural areas, and those branches generated ₹7,094 crore of disbursements in FY26, about 35% of total LAP disbursements, reflecting a strategy of going wide into Tier-3 and Tier-4 markets.
3. Home Loans: affordable housing for the cash-salaried and self-built
A home-loan business focused on lower-middle-income families who build their own houses or buy in small towns, where formal income documents are scarce but repayment intent is strong.
- Small tickets, big reach - the average loan size is ₹18.5 lakh with an average loan-to-value of 49.5%, and the Home Loans portfolio is from Tier II, III, IV cities and towns, far from the metro housing bubbles.
- Self-construction is the signature product - a significant share of the book funds borrowers building their own homes, a segment that demands expertise in assessing cash flows rather than relying on formal salary slips.
- No exposure to builder finance - the business carries no construction-finance exposure to developers and no material under-construction exposure to developer-supplied houses, so it avoids the completion risk that plagues many housing lenders.
- Distribution piggybacks on vehicle finance - 679 of its 712 branches are co-located with vehicle-finance branches, giving it an instant physical presence in small towns without building from scratch.
4. Consumer and Small Enterprise Loans: unsecured lending to known customers
An unsecured loan business that started by offering personal and business loans to Chola’s own captive customer base, then expanded into financing consumer electronics at the point of sale.
- Pre-approved to existing customers first - the direct-to-customer channel, launched through the Chola One app, offers fully digital loans to people whose repayment behaviour Chola already knows from their vehicle or property loans, reducing the guesswork in unsecured lending.
- Consumer durables at the checkout counter - the Consumer Durables vertical, launched via a tie-up with Samsung and now spanning brands like Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Whirlpool, disbursed over ₹2,174 crore in FY26 and acquired more than 10 lakh customers across roughly 10,000 pincodes.
- A deliberate exit from fintech partnerships - the company chose to wind down its partnership-led unsecured lending book in FY26, which explains the segment’s muted 4% AUM growth that year, as it refocused on loans to its own customer base where it controls underwriting.
5. SME Loans: term loans and equipment finance for small factories
A full-spectrum secured lending business for small and medium enterprises, offering everything from machinery loans to supply-chain finance, built on partnerships with more than 40 equipment manufacturers.
- OEM partnerships provide the deal flow - strategic tie-ups with over 40 original equipment manufacturers across industrial equipment, gensets, medical equipment, and solar finance mean customers are sourced at the point of equipment purchase, much like vehicle finance.
- Solar finance as the first green bet - the segment launched solar funding as the company’s first Green Finance product, financing rooftop and small-scale solar installations for businesses.
6. Secured Business and Personal Loans: collateral-backed credit for the unbanked micro-entrepreneur
A small-ticket secured lending business for grocery-shop owners, dairy farmers, and cash-salaried workers in Tier-III to Tier-VI towns, using cash-flow assessments instead of formal income proof.
- Tiny loans against property - with an average ticket size of ₹4.49 lakh and a maximum loan-to-value of 50%, these are loans to people who own a small property but have no formal income documents, a segment traditionally served only by local moneylenders.
- Cash-flow underwriting, not payslips - the credit assessment uses a form-based methodology that projects the borrower’s cash flows rather than demanding income-tax returns or salary slips, which is how it reaches customers who are new to formal credit.
- Doorstep service in small towns - the business operates through 414 branches, all co-located with vehicle-finance branches, and offers personalised doorstep service, recognising that its customers may not walk into a branch.
7. Gold Loans: the newest engine, launched where customers already keep their wealth
A newly launched gold-loan business that monetises the jewellery Indian households already own, starting in South and East India with 119 dedicated branches.
- A ₹1,804 crore book in its first year - the business launched in FY26 and already holds over 1,800 kg of gold as security across more than 26,000 customers, with an average ticket size of around ₹2 lakh and an average branch AUM of over ₹15 crore.
- Existing customers already use gold loans - the company estimates that 30-35% of its own vehicle-finance and other loan customers already take gold loans elsewhere, so the demand is proven within its own base.
- Security infrastructure built from day one - the business operates a 10-layer security framework with advanced vaults, centralised one-time-password-based access, 24-hour CCTV surveillance, and RFID tagging of pledged ornaments, because physical gold custody is the operational risk that defines this business.
Digital Platforms and Technology
A unified technology backbone that digitises the entire loan journey - from customer acquisition to collections - and feeds data back into credit models that get smarter with every loan.
- Three-layer architecture - the IT stack is organised into Systems of Engagement (customer-facing apps), Systems of Record (core loan and customer data), and Systems of Intelligence (analytics and AI models), all moving to cloud-native infrastructure.
- Fully digital origination - the loan-origination system handles eKYC with biometric and facial recognition, automated bureau checks, bank-statement analysis, e-sign, e-stamping, and system-based underwriting, so a loan can be approved and disbursed on the same day.
- Chola One as the super-app - a single app that offers personal loans, vehicle finance, home loans, insurance, and mutual funds, while also serving as a service channel for existing customers across any product and any branch.
- AI embedded across the lifecycle - artificial intelligence is used for lead nurturing, facial-verification KYC, alternate-data credit models for thin-file customers, generative AI for legal summarisation and credit memos, and AI voice agents for collections, with the explicit goal of improving the Gini coefficient of underwriting models to reduce credit losses.
Group structure and partners
Chola is the lending engine of the Murugappa Group, a 125-year-old conglomerate with ten listed companies and a $40.83 billion group market capitalisation, and it operates through a parent company with three subsidiaries and two associates that extend its reach into securities broking, payments, and fintech.
- Promoter holding and leadership - the promoter group holds 49.25% of Chola, led by Cholamandalam Financial Holdings Limited (43.76%), and Vellayan Subbiah continues as Executive Chairman with a term running to March 2030.
- Cholamandalam Securities - a wholly-owned subsidiary that is a member of the NSE and BSE, a depository participant, and a distributor of mutual funds and insurance, providing a technology-led investment platform that sits alongside the lending business.
- Payswiff Technologies - a 72.12%-held subsidiary that provides offline payment-aggregator services and point-of-sale solutions to over 3 lakh small and mid-sized merchants, acquired in 2022 to build digital-payment capabilities into the SME lending ecosystem.
- Fintech associates - Chola holds a 21% stake in Vishvakarma Payments, a consortium that applied for a retail-payments licence from the RBI, and a 16.29% stake in Paytail Commerce, a buy-now-pay-later platform where Chola provides checkout financing to customers in Tier-II to Tier-IV markets who lack credit cards.