Viji Finance is a small-ticket lender that steps in where banks stop - it gives working-capital loans to businesses and gold-backed loans to individuals, mostly without asking for collateral. Incorporated in Indore in 1994 and registered with the RBI since 1998, the company has spent three decades learning how to lend to borrowers that traditional banks consider too small or too informal. That learning shows up as a single-minded focus on keeping the operation lean and the recovery sharp - a recurring approach the management calls a business model built to “minimise risk and operating cost”. # Business segments A single lending engine with two distinct ways of putting money to work - unsecured term loans to businesses and a small secured book of gold loans - both funded by the same lean balance sheet. ## 1. Unsecured business lending: the core engine **The company lends money to small businesses and individuals without taking collateral, earning its keep from the interest spread and a disciplined recovery machine.** - **Loans without collateral** - nearly the entire loan book is unsecured: as of March 2023, Rs. 19.74 crore of gross loans carried no tangible security, against only Rs. 0.08 crore that were secured. That means the company bets on its ability to assess a borrower’s character and cash flows rather than on assets it can seize. - **Recovery is the real specialisation** - management lists “specialisation in the task of recovery” as a core strength, alongside deep knowledge of what its customer segment needs. Because the loans are unsecured, getting money back matters more than originating new loans, and the company has built its processes around that fact. - **Fixed-rate, rupee-only book** - all loans and borrowings are at fixed interest rates and denominated in Indian rupees, so the company carries no currency risk and no interest-rate risk from floating-rate exposure. That keeps the earnings stream predictable. - **Internal grades set the limits** - credit risk is managed through an in-house rating system that caps how much exposure the company will take to any single counterparty, with continuous monitoring of those limits. It is a belt-and-braces approach for a book where there is no collateral to fall back on. - **Funded by the founder, not by banks** - the company’s borrowings come from related parties, chiefly the Chairman and Managing Director, rather than from banks or financial institutions. That gives it a funding line that understands the business intimately, though it also means the balance sheet grows only as fast as the promoter’s own capacity. ## 2. Gold loans: the secured side bet **A small but deliberate diversification into lending against gold jewellery, introduced in FY22 to add a collateralised cushion to a largely unsecured book.** - **Jewellery as the fallback** - gold loans are backed by physical gold jewellery pledged by the borrower, giving the company a security it can liquidate if the borrower defaults. In a portfolio where almost everything else is unsecured, this is the one line of defence that comes with a hard asset. - **Still a sliver of the book** - as of March 2024, the gold loan portfolio represented just 0.20% of total assets, with total gold loans granted standing at Rs. 15.46 lakhs as of March 2022. It is an experiment, not a second engine - a toe in the water of secured retail lending. - **Same recovery discipline, different collateral** - the gold loan business plugs into the same operational backbone of prompt appraisal and disbursement that the company uses for its unsecured term loans. The difference is that here the recovery team has a physical asset to fall back on if the borrower’s cash flow dries up. # Group structure and partners **A standalone NBFC with no operating subsidiaries left, listed on three Indian exchanges, and funded by a promoter group that has repeatedly bought the company’s cast-off ventures.** - **Subsidiaries sold back to the family** - the company had two wholly-owned subsidiaries, both of which were sold to the promoters. S.L. Developers, formed for real estate, was sold in March 2021 for Rs. 3 lakh after it failed to find a project and had a negative net worth. Viji Housing Finance, which never commenced business due to pending approvals, was sold in January 2024 for Rs. 10 lakh to the Chairman, his wife, and a non-executive director. - **Listed on BSE, NSE and Calcutta Stock Exchange** - the equity shares trade on three Indian exchanges, with connectivity to both NSDL and CDSL for electronic holding. In mid-2025, the company also began exploring a listing of promoter-held shares on the SDAX Exchange in Singapore. - **Capital raised through rights and warrants** - a rights issue in May 2024 brought in fresh equity by issuing 6,00,00,000 shares at an 8:11 entitlement ratio, nearly doubling the outstanding share count. In March 2026, the board approved a preferential allotment of up to 12,75,00,000 convertible warrants to 22 non-promoter investors at Rs. 2.80 per warrant, giving each holder the right to convert into one equity share within 18 months. - **Small quoted equity holdings on the side** - the company holds quoted investments in Choksi Laboratories, Reliance Industries, and Soni Soya Product, though these are portfolio holdings rather than an operating business line.