Former YES Bank Senior President joins Rubique as COO

Strengthening the company’s leadership pillar, Rubique, the online credit marketplace providing technology-enabled end-to-end solutions to financing needs of individuals & SMEs, has today announced the appointment of former YES Bank, Senior President & Chief Financial Inclusion Officer, Ajay Desai as COO. Ajay is a veteran banker with 20+ years of experience and until recently, he was working as Senior President & Chief Financial Inclusion Officer of YES BANK.

The appointment is envisioned to leverage Ajay’s exceptional expertise in SME, financial exclusion & fintech to bolster Rubique’s growth in the fintech industry. As Chief Operating Officer, Ajay will help enhance the company's reach into hereto unexplored segments, mainly the Missing Middle SME and untapped geographies, mainly RURBAN. The main focus would be deployment of technology interventions/solutions in these sectors to address the credit gap. India is a credit deprived country & the credit gap is almost $300-$500billion. Ajay will work closely with Manav Jeet, Managing Director and CEO, to ensure smooth functioning of the group's operations, develop synergies across businesses and drive performance.

Welcoming Ajay Chandrakant Desai’s appointment, Manav Jeet, MD & CEO, Rubique said, “We are extremely delighted to have Ajay on board. Rubique’s technology ambition for SME financing coupled with Ajay’s expertise in the space, will help team Rubique to bring efficient & advanced technology solutions for this category. His experience will play a vital role in further enhancing overall growth and augment the company’s profitability and operating efficiencies. As we move to the next phase in our journey, we are excited to have someone like Ajay amongst in senior leadership team ”

Commenting on his new role, Ajay said, “India is one of the fastest growing fintech markets in the world. In my earlier initiatives with Yes Bank, I've demonstrated how technology can be the Game Changer to reach larger audience as well as address the ‘Last Miles’ problems efficiently. Our innovative MUDRA Loan program, YES LEAP touched about 2 million families across 260 districts with cumulative disbursement of Rs. 5200 crores. Another innovation, YES MONEY has facilitated remittances worth Rs. 16250 crores (~125 lakh transactions) for 20 lakh users through 40000+ touch points. These next to impossible projects were seamlessly executed mainly because of smart & efficient use of technology. And with Rubique I see a bigger opportunity to scale up, given its very well established Fintech Edge. Moreover, Rubique has a very strong focus on forming long term partnerships, revenue generation and cost-control, which is  rarely seen in any fintech company. I look forward to this challenging journey with Rubique & lead interesting assignments in this ever growing market of the fintech.”

A professional career spanning 20+ years across banking and rural development sectors, Ajay has been responsible for driving several initiatives to boost financial inclusion in both urban and rural banking in the country. Prior joining Rubique, Ajay was associated with YES Bank, ICICI Bank, and other noteworthy financial institutions in the country.

With technology at its core, Rubique realises that there is a strong gap in SME credit assessment and hence plans to invest further into technology and data to build technology and data solutions to make the process more transparent and seamless. Till date, the company has processed over 100,000 applications, disbursed INR 2,500+ crores worth of loans and signed up about 75,000+ cards across 89+ financial institutions. Rubique’s business has seen a fourfold increase year-on-year and it plans to increase its footprint to 100 cities by the end of the financial year.