Sun Pharmaceuticals Executive Director and promoter of Fortune Financial Services, Sudhir Valia has agreed in his personal capacity to pick up over 50 per cent stake in payment bank licence applicant Pay Point India Network, a provider of payment solutions.
The tie-up is to meet the minimum requirement of Rs 100 crore paid up equity capital as stipulated by the Reserve Bank of India.
Other big corporate individuals in the race to bag the differentiated bank licence are Future Group's Kishore Biyani, former Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan, Muthoot promoter MG George Muthoot and Sun Pharma founder Dilip Shanghvi, who is the brother-in-law of Sudhir Valia.
"Pay Point India's scope of business and activities make it rightly placed to capitalise on the Payments Bank opportunity. The strong fundamentals and customer reach has immense synergies with our existing business model at Fortune Financial Services. The exact terms and conditions will be finalized on the company acquiring a payments bank licence,” said Valia, who will pick up 50 per cent stake in Pay Point.
Pay Point India, which is also business correspondent to State Bank of India and Yes bank, was founded by Ketan Doshi and Romil Meghani and tied-up with IRCTC - Indian Railways, Tata, Reliance and utilities comprise BSNL, MTNL, BMC, BEST and Mahanagar Gas among others. Pay Point enables utility payments, remittances, travel bookings for air, rail, bus, and telecom and DTH recharges from its retail distribution network across India.
“These are exciting times for us and we are glad to receive the backing of a renowned name like Valia for our proposed banking venture. We are a fast moving consumer services company and already have a prepaid licence and a retail network of over 12,000 touch points across the country. We do around 25,000 transactions daily across all product lines which contribute to a turnover of Rs 450 crore to Rs 500 crore per year," said Ketan Doshi, Managing Director of Pay Point India Network.