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Srei Equipment Finance Limited, a wholly-owned sub-sidiary of Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited and UCO Bank, one of Indiaʼs premier public sector banks, announced a strategic alliance to offer joint loans for the purchase of construction and mining, farm and medical equipment under a co-lending arrangement. iQuippo will facilitate sourcing of loans under this programme. The strategic alliance will also allow both lenders to leverage each otherʼs customers and cross sell their products. The lenders will use the iQuippo platform, a unique digital market place with more than 90,000 registered users, for loan origination and sourcing of prospective borrowers and for electronic auction of equipment as and when required.

Sunil Kanoria, Vice Chairman, Srei, said, “The combined strength of Srei Equipment, UCO Bank and iQuippo will provide the necessary boost to demand for infrastructure equipment and create a win-win situation for all the partners and the customers. The strategic alliance will also help in fulfilling the governmentʼs vision of making credit available to MSME and retail customers in the infrastructure space at an affordable cost.”

Atul Kumar Goel, MD & CEO, UCO Bank, said, “We are happy to partner with Srei and play a key role in increasing funding to MSMEs through this initiative. The pan India reach of UCO Bank leveraged with Sreiʼs  expertise in equipment financing will definitely give easy access to low cost of funds to MSMEs.”

Ajay Vyas, Executive Director, UCO Bank, said, “RBIʼs initiative of co-origination is beneficial to all the stake-holders. Fresh credit flow will help the NBFCs and catalyse the growth of the MSME sector, which is the backbone of our economy. The digitised co-lending process through iQuippo portal will facilitate speedy disbursal of credit to MSMEs.”

Anant Raj Kanoria, CEO, iQuippo, said, “iQuippo’s state-of-the art platform, designed together with IBM, is Indiaʼs first platform to digitise the co-lending process. We are excited to add UCO Bank in the growing list of our financial services partners. We will assist the bank in expanding its reach into the MSME space and especially the construction and mining equipment sector.”