Vakrangee: An emerging leader in financial inclusion

India is the seventh largest economy globally and one of the leading countries demonstrating high economic year-on-year growth. With two-third of the population residing in villages and small towns, financial inclusion is the key to bridging the social divide and achieving a well-distributed, robust and sustainable economic growth.

Grant Thornton has done a detailed study and released a report on ‘Financial Inclusion and Rural India – Banking & ATM sector in India’. The report mentions that the financial inclusion initiatives by the government have witnessed tremendous success over the years, with 35.27 million accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). Approximately, 80 per cent of the accounts have a RuPay debit card linked with them.

RuPay card’s market share increased from 0.6 per cent in 2013 to over 50 per cent in 2018, thereby making it the largest payment card network in the country.


India has focused on exploring cost-effective and sustainable delivery mechanisms to reach out to remote locations. With the Indian banking sector in crisis, the growth in opening new brick and motor branches has been on the decline, yet the government has managed to continuously increase the financial inclusion levels in the country.

The RBI has widened the reach of financial services in far and remote areas by allowing private companies to act as Business Correspondents and non-bank entities to setup white label ATMs. These are examples of sustainable delivery mechanisms adopted by the government.

A focused government is also supported by the private sector. Companies such as Vakrangee Ltd have delivered service innovation by substantially strengthening their business models.

Cash in Cash out (CICO) network
The recent report by the Nandan Nilekani committee on deepening of digital payments has recommended that RBI must ensure a healthy CICO network so that all users have access to multiple ATMs/Business Correspondents within a three-kilometre radius for cash management needs. The Business Correspondents can serve customers of other banks.

Business Correspondents model
Business Correspondents is an innovative business models with improved technology, last mile reach and local presence (increasing trust). They connect India’s rural populace to modern technology and services via retail outlets spread across India.

WLA operators targeting rural ATM market In terms of year-on-year growth, players like Vakrangee have witnessed a growth of over 300 per cent from March 2018 to 2019 (and CAGR of 157.5 per cent from 2017 to 2019) in its number of WLAs across India.

From March 2018 to March 2019, though the total number of ATMs across India decreased from 2,06,871 to 2,02,196, the number of WLAs increased from 15,195 to 19,507 (addition of 4312 WLAs), a growth of 28 per cent.

The addition of WLAs was majorly through players like Vakrangee, which contributed to 58 per cent growth.

Vakrangee presence & impact
According to the report, Vakrangee has over 12,000 banking BC touch points, of which 82 per cent are situated in rural India. In FY 18, Vakrangee BCs were responsible for 31.7 per cent of all BSBDAs opened by all BCs across India.

Vakrangee has added over 3,200 ATMs in the past two years, with focus on building capacity in tier-5 and tier-6 towns. Further, the overall banking and ATM throughput from the Vakrangee Kendra network for FY 2019 (till December 31, 2019) is ?21,800 crore.

As per Grant Thornton, Vakrangee is the 13th largest operator of ATMs in India. In rural India, it remains the third largest player (with only SBI and Tata Indicash ahead). When compared to private sectors banks, it ranks way over HDFC Bank (1,063 ATMs) and ICICI Bank (760 ATMs) in rural India.

Vakrangee Kendra outlets in rural India allow people to capitalise benefits of financial inclusion, social inclusion and digital India. The best aspect of Vakrangee is its clear plan to open 25,000 Next Gen outlets by 2020-end to revive India’s financial local economy.