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 New Delhi: Citibank India, part of Citigroup, has announced a package of flexible financial services, targeted at the small businesses and professionals (SBP) with annual turnovers of up to Rs 50 crore ($10 million).
Through this new package, called CitiBusiness, the bank expects to comprehensively address these customer needs through four offerings:
• To overcome their scale disadvantages the bank helps negotiate special deals and discounts for smaller businesses from third-party suppliers like cargo and courier services, hotels, office automation and other product suppliers by leveraging on the collective power of CitiBusiness customers through a service called PowerAccess.
• CitiBusiness account, the bank's relationship core, serviced by a dedicated relationship manager for both personal and business banking needs.
• A business payment VISA credit card, CitiBusiness Card, that offers credit lines of up to Rs 10 lakh.
• Specialised business lending products such as short-term unsecured business loans, term loans, overdraft facilities, and non-fund based limits for letters of credit, bank guarantees and even future contracts.
Citibank says that the range of these facilities can be between Rs 10 lakh up to Rs 10 crore, to assist in equipment finance, working capital, export finance, and purchase of commercial real estate. The package also includes advisory services for strategy, marketing, HR, and web services, among others.
In addition, the CitiBusiness suite also provides customers a comprehensive evaluation of their financial health through a custom-developed application, Business CitiPro that benchmarks SBPs with their peers.
"The small businesses and professionals community is the key to India's continuing economic vitality and their contribution to exports, employment generation and to the country's GDP is remarkable," says PS Jayakumar, country business manager, global consumer group, Citigroup India. "We are extremely pleased to bring this exciting new generation of companies into our spectrum of customers through the CitiBusiness platform."
Small and medium business enterprises make up 95 per cent of businesses in Asia Pacific. In India, the small businesses and professionals (SBP) community is estimated at more than three million, representing over 98 per cent of business enterprises locally.
According to survey commissioned by Citibank in November 2005, small business companies and professionals in India, which lack the resources, support and networks to expand their business are an over-banked but under-serviced segment. These companies require a long-term relationship orientation, product customisation and flexibility, and financial partnership for overcoming scale disadvantages, which are offered only to large corporates.
The survey also highlighted that the SBP segment usually received just transactional services and small loans, and because of its size and relatively low cash flow requirements, its relationship itself is under-served.
Furthermore, SBPs employ fewer people and therefore do not have the manpower for non-core activities such as accounting and HR, as their larger counterparts. All of these weaken SBPs competitiveness and restrict their expansion.
According to Rajiv Jamkhedkar, business manager, CitiBusiness, Citibank N.A., "Through CitiBusiness, we aim to place this new segment of SBP centre-stage. The survey provided us with a 360 degree view of the values, needs and ambitions of our customers and we are confident that CitiBusiness will naturally fill the gap between what is being offered by the market and what these companies really need."
Presently, PowerAccess hosts exclusive deals and discounts for CitiBusiness customers on business-related requirements from DHL, eOfficePlanet (eOP) India Pvt. Ltd., Fortune Hotels, Hewlett Packard, Samsika Marketing Consultants Pvt. Ltd., Sarovar Park Plaza, among others. It also offers a complete assortment of value-added information such as Travel Services, Events and Seminars, Resource Centre, and Business Assistance. The Network will be continually expanded with the empanelment of more such renowned and reliable service partners.
In addition to the enhanced credit limits, the CitiBusiness Card has all the essential features of a Citibank Gold Card along with cash limits of up to 60 per cent of the credit line, the flexibility to assign and set credit lines for employees, and access to additional funding. This is available in two variants - the CitiBusiness personal card
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