HDFC Bank launched SMe Bank, e-banking service for Small and medium enterprises.  Mr. Aseem Dhru, Group Head – Business Banking, Commodity Finance, Rural Banking and Agriculture Lending launched the First SMe Bank in Mumbai as part of its ‘Go Digital’ campaign.  It was digital innovation of sorts as we watched the launch through video-conference from Chennai.

This offering alleviates the need for the SMEs to visit the branch making it a seamless offering.  It also provides the SMEs to bank 24 X 7 without bothering about the bank’s working hours and reduces the waiting time from few days to hours.  Safety and security has received foremost attention from the bank and SMEs can now bank with confidence.

With Digital India in the making, SMEs have emerged as the highly vibrant and dynamic sector of the Indian economy with contribution with over 3.6 crore units contributing 8 per cent to India’s GDP, 45 per cent to manufacturing output, 40 per cent to exports and employing over eight crore people.  It makes more sense to focus on this sector with a complete digital banking solution and HDFC Bank has just done that as an extension of ‘Bank Aapki Mutthi Mein’ campaign. Right now, this is being offered to existing customers and will be extended to new customers in a month.

Services SME can avail through the SMe bank includes

• One view of all their credit lines with the Bank and the asset outstanding. They can even know the maturity date of Letter of Credit, Bank Guarantees
• Pay and receive all money without even using a cheque book
• Get Letter of Credit, Bank Guarantee, Foreign currency outward remittances, Import bill under collection / LC done from their office
• All Important documents like Stock statements, Insurance, financials etc. can be uploaded with ease to the Bank for smooth continuation of credit facilities
• Get analytics based offers which are relevant to the customer
• Tickers and Alerts of renewal/expiry dates to facilitate SME’s in timely submissions
• For each client initiated transaction request, a QR code is sent which can be saved and used to know the status of the request thus ensuring transparency
• Clients can ask for seasonal / additional limits for a sudden business requirement and based on the analytics, the money could be credited to their accounts almost instantly

 The current relationship manager will still be available to ensure smooth transition and support to the new platform.  The whole process works on approval methodology to ensure security and control within the organization.