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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Traditional financiers and fintech upstarts alike are witnessing a surge in demand for gold loans, especially digitally.
Editor's note: “Indians love gold” is a line that is repeated ad nauseam in financial circles. The reasons for this are well documented, from tradition to perceived investment value to security. Over the decades, Indian households have built up gold worth $1-$1.5 trillion, or over Rs 100 lakh crore, worth of gold holdings, largely in the form of jewellery. More recently, gold has in different ways become a hot topic. We wrote just last month about the new buzz in fintech circles around digital gold. At the same time, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, another gold product has surged—the good old gold loan. Demand for gold loans saw a spike last year due to liquidity crunch in the system as banks and other lenders tightened lending standards across the board—especially in unsecured lending to retail. Indians increasingly turned to gold to raise the much-needed cash for survival, especially as the pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered waves of pay cuts and layoffs across industries. Gold loans extended by banks increased 132% last year, according to the latest credit report by the …
Faced with allegations of being a deposit business, the digital gold-focused startup finds itself at a crossroads.
Its biggest banking customer, Unity Small Finance Bank, has decided to part ways. The departure comes at a time when the fintech infrastructure startup has been trying to become a full-stack banking software provider.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s fintech has reported its first operationally profitable quarter. However, he will need to wait to win back the regulator’s trust for Paytm to scale further.
