Edelweiss Housing Finance Ltd launchs operations in Pune

PUNE: Edelweiss Housing Finance Ltd (EHFL) has launched operations Pune, one of the booming cities for real estate. The company aims to get a loan book of Rs 1000 crore from the city by 2015, Anil Kothuri, Head-Retail Finance, Edelweiss Group said.

The company started operations 11 months ago and has disbursed loans of Rs 240 crore so far. It has operations in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, while it plans to expand to 10 more cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat, this financial year.

Pune, an IT hub and educational city, has seen a real estate boom over the last few years. “Pune has emerged as a new destination for IT and BPO related industries. This has opened up avenues for a lot of real estate development in the city,” Mr Kothuri said.

He said the differentiating factor for the company was loan tenure of 25 years and higher percentage of income allowed for repayment.“This could give the borrower a larger loan amount or a smaller monthly installment” he added.

“The current housing finance market size is about Rs. 1.5 trillion and we expect it to double by the end of FY15. We expect to get about 2% of the market over the next 5 years. This should give us a loan book of about Rs. 1000 crore by 2015 in Pune,” Mr Kothuri stated. The company is also aiming for loan book of Rs 3000 crore nationally.