ElasticRun appoints Shailendra Narang as Director, Kredit Business

Pune (Maharashtra) [India], September 28 (ANI/NewsVoir): ElasticRun on Tuesday announced the appointment of Shailendra Narang, as Director, Kredit Business. In this role, Shailendra will be responsible for building the rural credit business, bringing in solutions focused on improving the credit access for the underserved and unbanked rural kirana merchants.
The largest and fastest-growing B2B e-commerce platform for rural India, ElasticRun is enabling businesses to expand their reach in deep rural India, hitherto untapped. With more than 100 top brands already benefitting through its deep rural store network, ElasticRun is now set to help rural business gain first time access to formal credit through banks and NBFCs. The company has already piloted the project with a few key players like RBL Bank, Loan Tap, Cash Kumar and Spice Money and now planning to expand the credit vertical, as a full-fledged business line.
A well-respected industry veteran with over two decades of experience, Shailendra, comes to ElasticRun from Hero FinCorp, where he spearheaded the SME and Unsecured business. At ElasticRun, Shailendra will be leading Kredit business to develop strategic partnerships & alliances with financial institutions, digital and physical acquisition of stores and brands to drive consistent business growth, and identify critical advocates for the Kredit platform.
Sandeep Deshmukh, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), ElasticRun, says, "I am pleased to welcome Shailendra as Director, Kredit platform. We believe that ElasticRun stands at the crossroads of exponential growth by using data and technology to tap into and service the needs of the deep rural markets across the country. 65% population lives in rural and is largely an under-serviced market as far as access to financial services is concerned. With our existing network capabilities, addition of Kredit business gives us a tremendous first movers advantage in the smaller markets."
Upon joining ElasticRun, Shailendra Narang, Director, Kredit, remarked, "The hinterland of India consists of 650,000 villages inhabiting 850 million consumers. Rural FMCG is expanding at a CAGR of 18% and is anticipated to cross US$100 billion by 2025. More than 15 million rural merchants have been largely deprived of formal credit solutions. Rural kirana stores associated with ElasticRun are far more digital, engaged and connected. This unfolds the unprecedented opportunity to introduce Kredit to aid financial inclusion and fulfil the million dreams. I am thrilled to join ElasticRun and feel privileged to have the opportunity to influence the socio-economic system of rural India and beyond."
Shailendra joins a slew of senior management hires at ElasticRun in the recent months. The company has been onboarding top talent across operations, human resources and business verticals. A performance-driven organisation, ElasticRun has been expanding business exponentially in the last few years. Set up on a state-of-the-art AI powered platform, it caters to industries across the board, including FMCG, Food, Manufacturing and E-commerce. By building the technology platforms for transactions, credit and data analytics, ElasticRun intends to become the de facto channel for Indian businesses to reach the under-serviced rural markets.
Founded by Sandeep Deshmukh, Shitiz Bansal and Saurabh Nigam in 2016, ElasticRun has built a highly scalable national distribution network which gives large businesses instant access to the rural kirana shops. Through its tech enabled shared economy model, ElasticRun customers gain large scale and low-cost distribution to the traditionally untapped rural market, thereby significantly increasing their reach and access. India has over 12 million kirana shops across the country. Ten million of these are in rural markets, where sales are expected to grow to US$600 billion over the next few years.
ElasticRun is a series D funded company, backed by Prosus Ventures, Avataar Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital.
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