Sahaj Retail Limited, a Kanoria Foundation initiative, plans to more than double its network and expand its services across verticals over the next two years.

The company, which offers last-mile facilities such as government-to-citizen services, financial inclusion, utility bill collection and e-learning, has a network of 93,000 service centres across 23 states. “Our plan is to double the network capacity to 2 lakh service centres across 30 states over the next two years,” said Amit Kumar Singh, CEO, Sahaj Retail Limited.

“We can expand in markets such as the south where we have thin presence and also deepen our presence in the existing markets. The idea is to make our network reach available to the rural parts of the country and take the services to the doorstep of these customers. One centre can employ 2-3 youths. So, this will also open up employment opportunities,” said Singh. Telangana, Daman, Sikkim are among the new markets where the company is looking to expand.

The company is always exploring opportunities in different services and markets to compensate for the losses in other segments. “One business goes down but another comes up and we are looking at extending geography and increasing business,” he said.

Sahaj had turned EBITDA positive in 2019-20 having reworked the business model. “Earlier, we were focusing more on government to citizen services. We have now added several B2C services. We are today a business correspondent for banks, we distribute insurance products, offer utility services, facilitate e-commerce and e-learning services,” Singh said.

The company is also expanding its service offerings. “The vertical that we see coming up is e-learning where we will tie up with various educational service provider companies. Micro insurance is another segment where there is potential as insurance penetration is lower in the rural area. We will also scale up our current portfolio. We will tie up with more banks to offer business correspondent services and we are also looking to ramp up a few of the government projects,” said Singh.

The company has also recently tied up with Amazon to increase the e-commerce firm’s reach in the rural parts and facilitate customer acquisition.