Piramal Capital & Housing Finance and API Holdings Partner to Offer Financing Solutions for India’s Rapidly Evolving Healthcare Ecosystem
Mumbai: Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited (PCHFL), the wholly owned subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises Limited, today announced its strategic partnership with API Holdings Limited (API Holdings) through its digital platform Retailio – India’s largest digital B2B healthcare platform. The partnership aims at synergizing respective capabilities to provide efficient and seamless financing solutions to consumers, retailers and merchants in the API Holdings’ healthcare ecosystem.
Under this partnership, PCHFL Finance has earmarked an initial amount of INR 100 crore for disbursement by March 2022, which will get upsized basis initial market response.
Further, PCHFL will provide solutions like Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) for consumers and merchants, multi-collateral loans for retailers, supply chain financing, hospital financing, invoice discounting, among others. This alliance leverages the strengths of both companies, making this a winning proposition for all stakeholders, thereby expanding the reach and tap new customers.
On the partnership, Jairam Sridharan, MD, Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited said, “We are pleased to partner with API Holdings to provide tech-enabled financing solutions to fulfill the healthcare needs of their customers. Healthcare has become one of the largest sector in India, driven by disruptive innovation and increasing spends by consumers – as people are prioritizing health and well-being in the new normal. New age platforms like Retailio are leading the paradigm shift in the sector through impactful and scalable digital health solutions that make a real difference in the lives of people. This partnership is in is line with our strategy of expanding our retail portfolio through a mix of collaboration-led origination model and leveraging our distinguished digital lending capabilities. We look forward to a profitable and long-term partnership with API Holdings, as we aim to disburse upto INR 100 crore by the end of March 2022.”
Harsh Parekh, Whole-time Director and Co-founder, API Holdings, said “We are extremely delighted to partner with Piramal Capital & Housing Finance and we believe that this partnership will provide the right capital impetus across the full spectrum of ecosystem partners that we currently cater to. By bringing together our potential synergies, we aim to provide capital to the underserved SME/ MSME segment that would in-turn help fuel growth for these businesses.”
Rohit Anand, Head – FinTech, API Holdings, said, “We, at API and Retailio are continuously striving to seamlessly digitize the current off-line healthcare market in India and our partnership with Piramal will enable us to extend various credit products through our ecosystem of platforms. We share a similar vision & mission with Piramal for the sector and now look to fast track roll-outs of various innovative offerings, for our SME / MSME partners as well as our consumers.”
API Holdings operates an integrated, end-to-end business that aims to provide solutions for the healthcare needs of consumers across all critical stages of healthcare delivery. Its presence today spans across key assets such as:
● Thyrocare: Leading diagnostic chain in India
● Akanamed: Leading medical supplier to hospitals in India
● Retailio: Leading B2B digital pharma platforms connecting distributors and pharmacies
Further, API Holdings (through its subsidiary), owns the PharmEasy brand along with the proprietary technology platform which powers the PharmEasy marketplace.
With the acquisition of DHFL, PCHF becomes one of the leading players in the retail lending segment with access to over 1 million lifetime customers, presence in 24 states with a network of over 300 branches. The company leverages the “phygital” lending platform driven by Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), including the new mobile app. With ‘Digital-at-its-Core’ strategy, the Piramal platform offers a quick and easy way for merchant and consumer companies to collaborate and fund loans on a large scale.