| Photo Credit: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE

In 2017, one of the foundational principles of SBFC Finance Ltd, was ‘Festina Lente’ or make haste, slowly. When you are building an institution in financial services, you need a unique concoction I call ‘controlled aggression’, which if formulated right, delivers sustainable high-quality growth. 

When you build a business today, there are two words you need to avoid like plague — Unicorn and IPO. When you set wrong goals, you shouldn’t be surprised if it leads to wrong behaviour and eventually to a wrong outcome. 

In financial services, there is only one narrow cobblestone pathway to heaven and many six-lane highways to hell. All one needs to do and it’s easier said than done is to stick to that arduous path. This business is different from others for two main reasons. It is the only business in the world that when you make a sale, money leaves the firm, therefore, loan growth could get cancerous. There is unlimited ask for our product, but if you conflate need with demand, you are on one of the hell highways. 

Retail is all about details. At SBFC, we operate with just one objective: to make loans easy for small businesses across small towns of India. On this metric, we have a lot to do to get there. No one can see the 18-hole golf course while playing. You play a hole at a time trying to improve your long game while working on your short game.

The amount of crises that came our way ensured we never had a dull moment. Building a business is like raising a child. There is a time when you protect, impart education and values. At some stage, the child becomes an adult and you let him/her face the world. Adulthood for companies is bringing it into the public markets. 

The path to listing is humbling. How much to raise, how to price to ensure fair valuation. You get one shot at presenting your company with institutional and retail investors. Also, sentiment moves with the mood of the market at that point in time. There are times when the wind will lift you, and there are times when the wind pushes you down; and once the process sets course, one has no control over the weather.

more like marriage

I have been asked to write a piece on dos and don’ts on the path to listing and how life changes after, but I have only this to say. Think of it as marriage. The honeymoon ends quickly and then you must get used to being answerable. Until you operate with your own money, you are a master, but the minute you take a rupee either as equity or as debt you become accountable. 

In effect nothing changes by listing except expectations of others. Till we were private we lived in an absolute world. Now, we are in a relative one. What we do versus peers is more important. The principle that works in sports is best followed. It is the anxiety of the result that creates stress. All one can do is to play the game with passion and honesty. You do your duty without worrying about the result — isn’t that what Krishna tells Arjun?

Results are our efforts plus X. That X we have no control over and, hence, is not worth fretting about. All good coaches teach you to worry only about the controllables — if we do that there is no stress. Life is short, building an institution is an onerous task we have set on ourselves, but what’s most important is having fun along the way for this journey has no finish line, and we are on an infinite journey. 

We, the founding team members, aren’t the owners; we are trustees and caretakers of SBFC and may God guide our hands and minds to deliver to all those who have put their faith in us. 

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