whats sachin bansals next startup this is a question often asked by entrepreneurs and investors in the startup ecosystem while the 37year old has been public about financial services being his next area of interest he unveiled his first major move by acquiring a majority stake in microfinance firm chaitanya rural intermediation development services bansal spoke to digbijay mishra and madhav chanchani on the rationale behind the investment and how he plans to use technology to take financial services to a wider set of people in india especially in the rural sector samit shetty the cofounder of chaitanya also joined toi for the interview edited excerpts what made you do this investment in chaitanya sachin this is kind of my first strategic play in the bfsi space what i have seen in chaitanya so far is they are great team great founders building the microfinance business starting from scratch in 2009 today its a very strong business leads in its geographies mostly focused on lowincome microcredit customers over time theyre expanding their portfolio now were going to add some digital lending businesses on top of that microfinancing digital lending would be focused on lowincome and middleincome customer so far chaitanya has been focused on lowincome customers credit to gdp ratio in india is 56 while it is 200 in china we believe especially in the rural area the level of underpenetration is much more if you go to mumbai the credit to gdp ratio would be over 100 but the same in bihar would be 16how much stake are you buying preciselysachin majority of the company was owned by financial investors founders and old angel investors are staying financial investors are exiting so you can say super majority stake founders have sold only a small part of their stake so how will the leadership be going forward between the three of you samit have you sold sharessamit lot of it is in early stages now to have a definitive view anand and i are firmly committed to the business on what we think chaitanya can deliver with sachin onboard we believe that this will help us grow in a much better way than what we have done in the pastsachin founders are selling a small portion of their holding the vast majority of their holding they are retaining your approach is different some of your peers are starting with commerce and then getting into lending based on their data what advantage do you see in your approachsachin if you are serious about digital lending or lending in general its a complete area of focus in itself you cant build it on the side that you have another business running and strapon lending i think it doesnt work that way bfsi should be the core focus area of the company for it to succeed it cant just be an addon i am sure there will be some play of existing commerce players or other internet companies that are trying lending but