Alive and kicking: What common thread links the new-age NBFCs?

Using their imagination,new-age shadow banks have shown that their business model can fly

Nearly five years ago, a clutch of financial-industry veterans bet some Rs 6,000 crore on reinventing the shadow banking business. Their entrepreneurial ventures kicked off around the time that the blowouts at Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) and Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL) occurred.

While obituaries were being written of non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), Vimal Bhandari of ARKA Fincap, Gunit Chadha of APAC Financial Services, Gaurav Gupta of Adani Capital, Aseem Dhru of SBFC Finance, Bhupinder Singh of InCred, and Shachindra Nath of UGRO Capital — to name a few — have refashioned the sector.

Among them, Bhandari has