YONO, the digital banking platform of State Bank of India, has reached a valuation of $40 billion within 3 years of its launch, according to the chairman Mr. Rajnish Kumar.
The State Bank of India is also working on creating a business-to-business (B2B) platform for the bills receivable, called the “Bharat Draft”. The YONO platform was launched by the State Bank of India in November 2017 to help its customers fulfill their banking, shopping, and investment needs.
According to Mr. Rajnish Kumar, YONO, which stands for You Only Need One is a profitable platform, and since YONO is within the bank, its valuation is not known to others. YONO platform`s valuation does not get reflected because it is sitting within the bank and if the platform was sitting outside the bank, it would receive the valuations that start-ups get, which is USD 40-50 billion.
YONO is the biggest startup by the State bank of India, according to the chairman Mr. Rajnish Kumar, whose three-year term as a chairman comes to an end next month.
The State Bank of India is adding around 70,000 customers per day to the platform and in the last six months, 2.7 crore users were added. Accelerated growth in the number of users in the platform was seen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The YONO platform was developed by the bank with the help from consultant McKinsey and technology major IBM. The digital platform makes a decent IRR (Internal Rate of Return). The State Bank of India currently is giving loans of over 70 crore rupees per day through digital means. These loans are also provided during weekends by digital means.
The bank aims to get all the entities on a single platform on the receivables front so that the bank can ensure that finance against the receivables is available to all entities. The bank has already started working on this aspect.
The State Bank of India is also working with startups focusing on areas like cybersecurity and fraud prevention and is planning to invest in some of them. The current challenges faced by startups are scaling up and mobilizing adequate resources.
The bank`s board has approved a spending limit of rupees 10 crores for the management to work with the startups.
