State Bank of India became the first public sector lender to launch wealth management service, a space dominated by private and foreign players, to cater to the fast-growing affluent segment of the country.
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SBI InCube, which has been launched in the country’s startup capital of Bengaluru, will provide budding young entrepreneurs advisory services ranging from setting up a company to issues related to taxation, and forex remittances.
On financial inclusion initiative, she said SBI is opening 70,000 accounts per day through 54,000 Customer Service Points, operated through channels like fertiliser dealers or grocery stores. While the bank will not offer any loans or take equity exposure in start-up companies, Bhattacharya said it would help entrepreneurs establish their start-ups firms and also advise them with various issues such as regulatory, legal and compliance.
“Actually, funding could be done when they become a little more mature or they have sufficient number of orders for scaling the companies”.
The branch, located in downtown Seoul, is the Indian bank’s first in South Korea, though the institution set up a representative office in Seoul in 2013.
We want to be a part of the growth of startups and India itself. “We still believe that we are not giving them financial help because financing is not the only thing that start-ups need”. Its customers would have access to a relationship manager and trained investment experts who would guide them on best investment options across categories. The bank intends to open similar branches in Pune and NCR later, she said.
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State Bank of India plans to list some of its subsidiaries on the stock exchanges and sell non-core assets to meet higher capital requirement that will kick with implementation of Basel-III norms from March 2019. This includes increasing exemption limit under Section 80C, she added.
