In October 2024, fintech startup Slice merged with North East SFB. Thereby, Slice, along with its in-house non-banking finance entity, Quadrillion Finance, became part of the newly branded bank. In FY24, North East Small Finance Bank reported a net loss of Rs 441 crore.
Speaking to ET, Bajaj said that while Quadrillion Finance, on a standalone basis, was always profitable, Slice as a whole was reporting losses.
“Now all the entities are the same, it’s just one single entity, so becoming profitable as that single entity was still a task that we had taken, we wanted to achieve in the next one year, and now we have achieved it,” Bajaj said. “It’s always better as a bank to run profitably.”
As a bank, Slice has already become a public limited entity and is looking to launch an initial public offering in the next three to four years, Bajaj added.
Without disclosing specific business numbers, Bajaj said that the bank has doubled its deposits in the last six months and is adding around 300,000 customers every month.
ET had reported on January 27 that Slice was looking to raise around $250 million to scale up its digital banking aspirations. Bajaj said that while as a bank, Slice will have to raise capital, officially, no conversations are taking place with investors right now, but many investors have shown interest given the conversion of the fintech into a bank.
On the business front, Slice is building a digital banking platform that will seek to leverage the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to offer basic banking and payment services to customers. The bank has launched its own credit card and its UPI-enabled ATM.
With the RuPay-powered credit card, the bank is trying to target a section of the 300 million digitally payment-savvy, credit-worthy customers in the country. With the ATM product, Slice is looking to serve customers who might have a smartphone but still need cash for their daily transactions.
“Over the last nine to 10 years, we have been doing this; we have serviced almost close to 4.5-5 million customers, given credit to them, and half of those customers have been new to credit,” he said.
