Shriram Group to have five regional poles ahead of merger

Mumbai: The Shriram Group will carve its business into five different regions with a joint managing director (JMD) for each region as it prepares to consolidate its businesses by the first week of November.

Three of the five JMDs will be based in the southern part of the country, highlighting the group's concentration in that region.

The company will have one JMD each based in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai along with Mumbai and Ahmedabad to handle the day to day operations of the region.

Vice-chairman-designate Umesh Revankar said even as the group awaits National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approval, it is also unifying operations and products in the backend to ensure it works as a single entity as soon as all the approvals are in place. The group has hired PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to help the integration of human resources, processes and accounting of Shriram Transport Finance Company (STFC) and Shriram City Union Finance (SCUF).

In December, the group announced the consolidation of its lending arms into a single entity known as Shriram Finance to take advantage of economies of scale, cross-selling opportunities, lending synergies and the lower cost of funds that accrue to a large entity.

"We are conducting pilots in 25 branches each of STFC and SCUF. Some products like two-wheelers can be aligned easily but others like SME finance, which was part of SCUF, will have to be done gradually because it has to be offered only in branches or geographies which have potential," Revankar said.

After the merger, it will be the largest retail non-banking finance company in India with more than 20 million customers, ₹1.50 lakh crore of assets under management, 3,500 branches and 50,000 employees, the group said in December.