BusinessCredit

Typically: PAN and Aadhaar of the promoters, business registration or GST certificate, the last two to three years of ITRs with computation, audited financials, twelve months of current-account statements, GST returns, and existing loan sanction letters. Secured facilities add the property title chain. We reconcile these against each other before submission, because mismatches between GST turnover, ITR turnover and banking credits are the most common reason a viable file gets priced badly or declined.

Most lenders look for a business at least two to three years old with filed returns, and unsecured programmes generally start around ₹40–50 lakh of annual turnover, though thresholds vary widely by lender and sector. Newer businesses and those below the threshold are usually better served by a loan against property or a facility backed by the promoter's personal profile.

Materially, yes. Because it is secured against real estate, a LAP typically prices several percentage points below an unsecured business loan and runs for ten to fifteen years instead of three to five. The trade-off is real: the property is at risk, and processing takes longer because of legal and technical valuation. For funding expansion it is usually the right structure; for a two-month cash-flow gap it is not.

An unsecured business loan on a clean, complete file typically sanctions in one to two weeks. Loan against property and project finance run three to six weeks because of valuation and title verification. The variable is almost always documentation readiness, which is why we spend the first meeting on the file rather than on lenders.

Multiple formal applications in a short window each register as a hard enquiry and can depress the score, which is exactly why applying scattershot is a bad idea. We assess which lenders realistically fit your profile first and approach a shortlist, rather than submitting everywhere and letting the record take the damage.

It is harder and it costs more, because for small and medium businesses lenders weigh the promoter's personal credit heavily. If the score is low for a fixable reason — a settled account never marked settled, a closed card still reporting a balance — correcting the record first is usually worth more than any rate we could negotiate around it.