Citibank introduces special package for small businesses, professionals

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 Rs50 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 Rs10 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 Rs10 lakh up to Rs10 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.