How was Q2 for the company?
Q2 was very good for us. We grew at about 35% on our top line in Q2 over last year. PAT also grew by nearly 75% year on year. Transaction volume grew by about 32%. There was overall growth in terms of transaction, the top line and PAT and our model of asset light scalable model is starting to show good results. We are able to reach millions of customers. Our CASA numbers grew by 18% on a year on year basis. Our UPI transactions went up by nearly four times in the last quarter.
Other income is a very important component for the company. How did it fare this quarter?
Other income is more or less in line with the quarter numbers. There is no exceptional item as such in the other income. But a payments bank is different from normal banks. We do not offer credit on our own books and so we do not have interest and other income to that level in our balance sheet. We do not take any credit risk per se in the business. Our model is very simple. We provide banking services to the customers who are in the middle or the mass market segment — around 600-700 million people who are all across the country. They do not have good access to branch or ATM networks and they have to travel quite a bit of distance. We provide them this service through a merchant which could be your neighbourhood merchant ecosystem and through that platform, he is able to do transactions.
It is a very friendly ecosystem which we have built for doing transactions. Other income does not constitute a big portion of our business, 97% of our income comes from transaction pieces and about 3% comes from NII which is on the deposits which we earn.
How do you plan to increase the customer base even from here on?
We have been expanding our network of merchants quite aggressively from 6,40,000 numbers in March 21 to nearly 800,000 plus now. We are adding more than 1,000- 1,100 merchants a day. Through that platform, we are able to increase the customer footfall.
Last year, we were adding about 3,000 customers a day. Right now, we are adding around 6,500 customers a day. So the expansion of the customers is growing because of the network effect which we are able to create. We get a merchant in the neighbourhood and through that we are able to bring more and more customers on to our platform. There is a 32% growth on the transaction volume year on year basis in this quarter.
Ours is a very unique model because we do not set up big fixed costs. Ours is a very asset light model in which through merchants and through mobiles, we are able to connect to millions of customers. We also offer a very unique subscription product on our savings account and current account where the customer has to pay a fixed amount for the year and he continues to get full service throughout the year. Next year, he again pays and he can get that service again for the next year.
We are seeing good traction on the customer side as well as on the digital side. Our model of making this ecosystem phygital which has started to show results and that is where we see big momentum and a growth coming from the Fino ecosystem. We are very good on liability and payments. We are adding more on the credit side through partnerships with other NBFCs and banks where the risk is on them and we are also trying to get into investment products and international remittances which should be there in the next quarter or so.
