The Bharatpe- Centrum joint venture to pump crores into PMC on Merger
The joint venture that is floated by Centrum Group and the digital payments startup Bharatpe for launching a small finance bank will infuse around Rs. 1,800 crore capital into troubled PMC ( Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank) on its merger with a proposed bank.
The Reserve Bank of India, last Friday, gave in-principle approval to Centrum Financial Services. Also, a step-down arm of the diversified financial services group, to set up a small finance bank(SEB). It was provided to take over the troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank. 
This paves the clear way of ending nearly two anxious years for the depositors of the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC), whose over Rs. 10,723 crore are stuck in the bank, which has been under the administrator of RBIA since September 2019.
The Centrum group has made up an equal joint venture with the Resilient Innovations to launch SFB. The Resilient Innovation is an arm of the Gurugram based Bharatpe. But the Centrum Capital will no doubt, be the promoter of the SFB, under the prevailing laws.
“We (the SFB joint venture) have set aside Rs. 1,800 crore for the SFB, which eventually will be pumped into PMC once the government scheme for a merger is notified. One of the Rs. 1,800 crore, Rs. 900 crore will be invested in the first year by the joint venture split equally between the two and the remaining capital in stages.” told Jaspal Bindra, executive chairman of the Centrum Group.
Whether they will take over more than Rs. 6,500 crore of the NPSs of PMC and also the over Rs. 10,700 of its deposits, Bindra said that will be known only after the government notified the merger scheme.
