Vellayan Subbiah

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Class of 2024, India
Chairman of Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co. Ltd. and Executive Vice-Chairman of Tube Investments Of India

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Vellayan Subbiah is growing small ticket lending to bring big returns.

For Vellayan Subbiah, customers aren’t just names on a list. They’re individuals with dreams and small businesses with potential — if they could access financing to grow. Vellayan believes in customer-centricity. It’s the reason he climbed into a customer’s truck for a three-day road trip to see their business from the ground up, and the impetus behind a bold move that accelerated lending for thousands of lower-income borrowers across India. 

Dividing the country into 65,000 micro markets, Vellayan implemented a new risk-based pricing strategy across his lending organization, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Limited (CIFCL), improving financing for customers with traditional borrowing difficulties. Today, that foresight has helped many lower- and middle-income families own homes. Along with small ticket lending and supporting young borrowers, Vellayan has made CIFCL the second largest non-banking finance company in the country through offerings that include home equity and business loans, vehicle financing, investment advice and stock brokerage.  

As a fourth-generation entrepreneur of the family-owned Murugappa Group, Vellayan is inherently driven to build a better future. As Executive Vice President of group-owned Tube Investments of India (TII), he turned around debt-laden CG Power in a year and is currently venturing into electric vehicles, testing medical consumables and pioneering cycle retailing in India to improve access to inexpensive transportation. All of this has made TII one of India’s leading engineering companies that has seen its stock climb 600% in four years.