Chief Executive Officer / India
The business we chose not to book
- Outstanding loans
- ₹1,640 Cr
- March 2026; Soraveth Business Finance
- Branches
- 24
- Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh
- Colleagues
- 520
- Company headcount at March 2026
Decisions & consequences
01A smaller facility after the acceptance record changed
A maintenance contractor requested a ₹24 crore working-capital facility in August 2024. The supporting schedule contained 112 invoices with a face value of ₹36 crore. The business team saw an established customer with a growing order book and wanted a quick decision. Our initial review concentrated on invoice age and payment history. A servicing colleague then identified correspondence showing that eighteen invoices, worth ₹3.6 crore, concerned work the buyer had disputed. The difference was not a late payment against an otherwise settled obligation.
I asked the credit head to reopen the proposal with a separate account of accepted work, disputed work and the concentration of expected receipts. The relationship team argued that the borrower had delivered similar contracts before and that a reduced offer might send it elsewhere. I accepted that commercial risk. Past performance could inform the assessment, but it could not turn the current dispute into an accepted receivable. We also had to consider the borrower's other operating commitments and its reliance on one large buyer. Simply subtracting ₹3.6 crore from the requested amount would have been an inadequate decision.
The approved limit was ₹14 crore, with availability staged against the agreed evidence and the credit team's continuing conditions. The borrower accepted the smaller facility and arranged part of its remaining requirement elsewhere. We gave up ₹10 crore of requested capacity and the associated prospective income. We did not take ownership of the invoices or determine who would prevail in the underlying dispute. I required the branch and central servicing team to use one explanation of the conditions so that a sales conversation could not undo the decision later.
The recorded outcome is a smaller, more clearly supported commitment. I cannot claim that the original proposal would have produced a loss. My responsibility was to insist that an unresolved commercial fact changed the decision before we described funds as available.
Paying more to reduce reliance on a near-term refinancing
The FY2026 growth plan included ₹180 crore of additional borrowing on a six-month arrangement. The offered price was attractive, and the proposal assumed renewal before the facility expired. Some customer commitments and expected loan cash flows extended beyond that point. Our finance head had identified the mismatch, but the first board paper placed most emphasis on the cost of funds and the planned lending volume. I asked for a second version that showed the consequences if renewal were smaller, later or unavailable.
Business development preferred the original arrangement. It would support the planned disbursements and avoid a higher funding price. The promoting shareholders also wanted to preserve the growth programme after the work already invested in new relationships. I agreed that a smaller programme would disappoint customers and colleagues. I did not agree that a history of renewals made the next renewal an existing resource. The board needed to see the lending commitments beside the dates on which our own funding could change.
We chose ₹110 crore of eighteen-month funding at a rate ninety basis points above the six-month offer and deferred ₹70 crore of planned lending. At full utilisation, that rate difference represented ₹99 lakh of additional annualised interest on the ₹110 crore. It was a comparison at full draw, not the actual expense for the financial year. The finance team retained responsibility for the facility conditions and the wider liquidity position. My decision concerned the scale of the growth plan we were prepared to support on those terms.
The change reduced our dependence on one imminent refinancing, while leaving other funding and collection risks in place. We communicated the lower lending capacity before making further customer commitments. I accepted a smaller near-term business opportunity and a higher unit cost, rather than allowing an uncertain renewal to disappear inside an attractive average funding rate.
Removing the income attached to an automatic rollover
A customer query in November 2025 led us to examine an ₹8,000 charge described as a facility renewal fee. In a group of accounts, the operating system had rolled the facility forward without the substantive review that the description suggested. The charge had been disclosed in the schedule, but the work behind it was inconsistent. I asked operations and compliance to distinguish a completed renewal review from an administrative extension. This was an internal product and service decision, not a claim that disclosure alone settled every legal question.
The commercial team was concerned about losing recurring income and about customers comparing the revised treatment with older accounts. Operations also warned that a more explicit review standard would consume staff time. Those were real consequences. My view was that we should price a service we could describe and perform. A label in a fee table was not sufficient evidence that the service had occurred. We separated the prospective product change from the review of historic cases, which remained with compliance and the relevant case owners.
For future automatic rollovers we removed the charge. A disclosed fee could apply only where the agreed renewal review had actually been completed. The annual plan had assumed six hundred automatic rollovers at ₹8,000 each, so we removed ₹48 lakh of projected fee income. We did not book an offsetting retention benefit. Existing customer questions were considered individually rather than answered with a blanket statement that every old charge was either correct or refundable.
The operating record now identifies the review performed and the basis of any associated charge. I approved the revenue reduction and asked the finance head to keep it visible in the plan. The useful result was a narrower promise supported by identifiable work. Whether that decision improves the longer-term relationship is a separate question requiring evidence beyond the absence of a complaint.
Keeping the service team when two counters closed
Two branch counters within one regional catchment were proposed for closure during 2025. Their combined annual operating budget was ₹1.18 crore. The first replacement plan put ₹45 lakh against central support and suggested a ₹73 lakh annual saving. It assumed that most customer visits would become digital requests. I asked the operations head to classify the visits before accepting the proposal. Many concerned unresolved conditions, payment allocation and renewal evidence rather than routine transactions that a customer could complete unaided.
The property team wanted to exit the premises promptly. The central team could handle processing but did not have spare capacity to inherit all the local explanation and follow-up work. Six service colleagues knew the customer relationships and the recurring exceptions. Retaining them would make the saving smaller. I chose to separate the property decision from the service decision. We could close the counters without pretending that the underlying work had disappeared.
The revised annual budget retained those six colleagues at ₹54 lakh, provided a shared office and scheduled meeting space for ₹12 lakh, and allocated ₹16 lakh for central processing support. The resulting ₹82 lakh budget produced a planned saving of ₹36 lakh against the previous ₹1.18 crore. That was ₹37 lakh less than the first proposal claimed. These were comparable annual budgets, not a statement of cash already saved; exit and transition costs were reviewed separately before the leases ended.
Each customer received a named service contact, and operations monitored unresolved requests during the transition. I did not present the counter closure as proof of a better digital experience. The decision gave up part of the apparent saving to retain a capability the business still needed. It also established a question I now ask of every location proposal: which activities stop, which move, and whose budget will carry the work that remains?