‘Chola Securities being revamped to achieve ₹100 crore gross profit in 5 years’

Cholamandalam Securities Ltd. (CSec), a subsidiary of Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co. Ltd., is being revamped by verticalising the businesses into four to achieve a gross profit of ₹100 crore in five years, said a top company executive.

“We began the restructuring exercise some 18 months ago. The task I was given in hand was to revamp CSec, which has been lying low for some time,” chief business officer Senthilkumar Naidu said in an interaction.

Top officials of the Murugappa Group had felt that all subsidiary companies should have consistent growth like the parent company and Mr. Naidu was onboarded in December 2022.

Since then the company’s gross profit had more than doubled to ₹10.60 crore from ₹4.80 crore and is likely to touch ₹20 crore during the current fiscal.

“We completely restructured our business model. We defined vertical wise teams such as private client group, retail, franchise team and institutional business combined with distribution business to increase the market share,” Mr. Naidu said.

According to Mr. Naidu, all the four business verticals have a business head. CSec focused on two pillars that were client-centric and employee-centric. This helped the company to scale up its exchange ranking from 99 to 50.

It now aims to be among the top 20 trading houses in the next few years. In the last 18 months, more focus is being given to technology and risk policies, Mr. Naidu said.

“The parent company is very strong. We want to catch up and make use of the opportunity and reach it has created in India. Our immediate target is to become a ₹100-crore company in gross profit and achieve a topline of ₹300-350 crore in 5-6 years and make it big,” he said.

CSec plans to increase its employee base to 1,000 from 250 in two to three years. It has a client base of 90,000 of which 35,000 are active clients, Mr. Naidu said. “In the next few years, we want to onboard more clients and work towards a healthy active base. CSec has ample opportunities to grow through both open market channels and synergies with our parent company, Chola Finance, which boasts more than four million existing clients.” As the largest non-banking financial company in the country with over 1,500 branches, ₹1.77 lakh crore assets under management and more than 61,000 employees, we envision that much of our client acquisition will be driven by internal resources and technology,” he said.