- Sammaan Capital is fundamentally a distribution machine for credit - it originates home loans and business loans, then either holds them or sells them to banks, earning fees and spreads at every step. Born as Indiabulls Housing Finance in 2005, the company spent two decades building a mortgage origination engine that has disbursed roughly INR 3.6 lakh crore to more than 1.5 million customers, then deliberately de-promoterised itself into a board-run institution before International Holding Company acquired a strategic stake and became its promoter in 2026 - one of the largest foreign direct investments ever in an Indian NBFC. The recurring approach is simple: originate loans at scale, prove their quality through a cycle, then let partner banks fund the bulk of them while Sammaan keeps a slice and collects fees - an asset-light model that turns credit skill into fee income without tying up all its own capital.
Business segments
Two lending engines, one soon to be merged into the other - a large-scale mortgage and business-loan origination platform that earns through spreads and fees, and a wholly owned affordable-housing subsidiary that reaches smaller-town borrowers with the same asset-light playbook.
1. Mortgage and business lending: the origination-and-distribution engine
Sammaan originates home loans and secured business loans, keeps a portion on its books, and sells or co-lends the rest to banks - earning interest on what it holds and fees on everything it moves.
- Spread income from the retained book - the company earns the gap between what borrowers pay (8.5%-17% depending on the loan type) and its own cost of funds, on a loan portfolio of INR 53,160 crore that carries zero gross NPAs and has provision buffers already capturing expected credit costs.
- Fee income from an asset-light flywheel - for loans it co-lends or sells to partner banks, Sammaan collects a processing fee from the customer, an origination fee from the bank, an annual servicing fee for the life of the loan, and insurance commissions, while sharing credit risk pari-passu on the portion it retains (typically 20% in co-lending deals).
- Twenty-six bank relationships that validate the underwriting - the company has co-lending and sell-down arrangements with 26 banks and financial institutions, and its loan documentation, valuation methodology and credit policies have been adopted by multiple public and private sector banks as their own standard, something the company calls “perhaps India’s first such example” of a lender’s model becoming an industry standard.
- A credit track record built over 25 years - across INR 3.6 lakh crore of lifetime disbursals, the annualised credit cost is 1.9%, and across all co-lending and sell-down pools the 90-day delinquency rate is just 15 basis points; the company also recovered 71% of roughly INR 5,500 crore in loans sold to asset reconstruction companies, against an industry average of 12% after five years.
- A branch network that feeds the pipeline - loans are sourced through 137 offices across 20 states, a digital platform that takes a home loan from application to disbursal in 5-7 days (targeted at 2-3 days), and direct sales agents, with plans to scale to 1,600 branches and 20,000 people.
2. Sammaan Finserve: affordable housing for smaller towns
A wholly owned subsidiary that makes mortgage loans to first-time homebuyers and small-business owners in semi-urban markets, using the same co-lending and assignment playbook - and is being merged back into the parent.
- Small-ticket loans for underserved borrowers - Sammaan Finserve focuses on home loans and loans against property with average ticket sizes of INR 15-50 lakh, aimed at self-employed individuals, small manufacturers and service businesses in emerging geographies.
- Its own balance sheet and governance - the subsidiary has an AUM of INR 7,125 crore and a net worth of over INR 3,000 crore, with a separate risk framework and board, and had scaled to 107 branches and 1,016 employees by the time the merger was announced.
- Being folded into the parent for simplicity - a Scheme of Arrangement to demerge SFL’s NBFC business into Sammaan Capital on a going-concern basis has received RBI no-objection and NCLT approval of the first motion application, with no consideration payable since Sammaan Capital is the sole shareholder; once effective, SFL will surrender its NBFC licence and the parent will offer the full suite of mortgage-backed loans under one roof.
Technology and AI capability
A proprietary digital platform that takes a home loan from application to disbursal without paper, now being rewired with AI from the new promoter’s ecosystem to cut costs and speed up decisions.
- End-to-end digital origination - the eHome Loans platform, launched in 2016 as what the company says was India’s first fully digital home-loan system, integrates application, sanction, disbursal and post-disbursal servicing; roughly 80% of customer document requests and 60% of post-disbursal services are handled through the platform, and over 99% of repayments come in electronically.
- AI use cases from the IHC ecosystem - 37 AI applications are under evaluation or implementation, targeting a 30% lift in agent productivity, a cost-to-income ratio of about 26% by FY30, and better risk management through early-warning signals and fraud detection.
- Standardised rails for bank partners - the technology stack enforces common credit-policy parameters, standardised appraisal documents and process flows across co-lending partners, so a loan originated by Sammaan looks identical to one a partner bank would underwrite itself.
Group structure and partners
Sammaan Capital is the Indian anchor of a $233-billion Abu Dhabi conglomerate’s global financial-services platform, with a promoter that brings capital, technology access and a portfolio of investments in companies from SpaceX to Adani Group.
- IHC as promoter and strategic shareholder - International Holding Company, listed on the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange, acquired a 28.5% stake (rising to roughly 41% on warrant conversion within 18 months) through its subsidiary Avenir Investment, in a transaction aggregating INR 8,850 crore - described as one of the largest foreign direct investments in the Indian NBFC sector.
- Board with regulatory and banking heft - the board includes a former RBI Deputy Governor as Chairman, a former MD and CEO of Bank of India, a former Deloitte partner, a retired Indian Revenue Service officer, a nominee of LIC of India, and IHC’s Group CFO as a nominee director, alongside the MD and CEO who has over 24 years in the industry.
- Subsidiary consolidation underway - beyond the Sammaan Finserve demerger, a separate scheme is amalgamating six wholly owned service subsidiaries (collection agency, sales, advisory and insurance entities) into the parent, with shareholder and creditor approval already obtained and an appointed date of April 1, 2025; no new shares or cash will be issued since Sammaan Capital owns all of them.