Our international ambition is very limited and only time will tell whether we are right. When all those building societies were crumbling abroad, we were getting calls for making equity investments but we do not have the resources and have enough work to do in India. Our international operation is very modest. We have set up housing finance companies in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Egypt with local partners. We have made small investments and getting dividends from them.
We are interested in increasing the housing stock in India — the home ownership rate. So, we are opening small representative offices and source housing loans wherever there is a large Indian population. We have such offices in London and Dubai where we offer information on housing — price, availability etc.
The applications are processed in India and the loans are disbursed in India as the houses are in India, but the repayments come from overseas. We want to set up a similar office in Singapore.
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