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Started from a village in Tamil Nadu and built an 8500 CR company. 1. Born in the rural foothills of Pachamalai in Tamil Nadu, Arulmany Duraiswamy used to manage oilseeds orchards, helping villagers overcome financial gaps. Honing his knowledge further, he completed his diploma in Rural Management from IRMA, but the big moment came in 1995. 👇🏻 2. He joined Cholamandalam DBS (Murugappa Group) and worked hard for the next twelve years on captive DSA and franchisee models, extending vehicle finance services to smaller towns. Arulamny became the Senior Vice President, but he had just started. 🙌 3. In 2010, he joined Aptus Value Housing Finance as their CEO and serviced the credit demand among rural micro-enterprises. During his four years of working there, he realised that credit was not the problem; instead, it was credit history. Nobody had it while applying for rural loans, and he wanted to solve it. 🤔 4. He left Aptus and started a company with a single branch in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, offering loans of Rs 3-5 lakh for 5-7 years to small businesses on their houses. He named it after the Latin word for "truth," which he wanted to be among his borrowers. In 2015, Veritas Finance was born. 🚀 5. He targeted the micro and small enterprises, which accounted for 97% of the 29.3 lakh CR credit gap. People doubted whether these enterprises, earning between Rs 25,000 and Rs 60,000 with no prior exposure to formal credit, would even need such loans, let alone repay them. 🤨 6. Within one year, he proved them wrong and scaled to a loan book of 4 CR with 200 customers and opened 12 branches in Tamil Nadu. In 2016, he raised 30 CR from Lok Capital and Caspian and served working capital, business expansion as well as asset creation needs. ✅ 7. By March 2017, he had grown the loan book to 92.31 CR and earned a 12.67 CR revenue (13.72% margin) from operations. It scaled to 60 branches, 97 micro-centres and 12,000 customers across Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, West Bengal, and Odisha. But he was missing a trick. 🤔 8. He knew that technology would be needed for low-cost, high-volume model to bring down the servicing cost. As he rolled out the integrated Veritas app, it scaled to 21,000 customers, 132 branches and a loan book of 500 CR by 2018. It raised 200 CR from Norwest and became an 1120 CR company. 📈 9. Growing 20% yearly, Veritas had touched 60,000 customers, 218 branches and a loan book of 1750 CR by 2021. In October 2021, it raised 500 CR from Kedaara and became a 4000 CR company. 💰 10. Today, Veritas Finance has 400 branches, 2 lakh customers, and a loan book of 6400 crore. At a gross revenue of 1124 CR and a net profit of 245 CR, it became a unicorn on 7th September 2024, valued at 8500 CR. 🦄 ➡️ Even after Demonetisation and COVID 19, Arulmany Duraiswamy will continue to be known for the industry's highest 98% collection rate. 🙏