Chola Brand Guidelines: Murugappa’s 1978 Equipment Financier & Enter a Better Life

Incorporated in 1978 as an equipment financier.

Chola is the brand of Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company, a non-banking finance company based in Chennai. Its 2025–26 annual report says it was incorporated in 1978 as the financial services arm of the Murugappa Group and began business as an equipment financing company; a January 2020 press release issued with CDC Group, the British development finance institution, gives the same year. English Wikipedia notes that the company is known as “Chola,” and the annual report uses the short name throughout.

The Murugappa Group is also based in Chennai. English Wikipedia dates the group to a money-lending and banking business set up by its founder, A. M. Murugappa Chettiar, in 1900. Chola’s annual report lists ten listed group companies, among them Tube Investments of India, Coromandel International, Carborundum Universal and Cholamandalam Financial Holdings, and group brands including Hercules, BSA, Montra, Ajax and Parry’s. Its businesses, the report says, range from abrasives, technical ceramics and auto components to bicycles, fertilisers, sugar and tea.

The Chola name is shared within the group. The same report lists Chola MS, the brand of the group’s general insurer, Cholamandalam MS General Insurance, alongside Chola as one of the group’s brands; the two are separate companies. In January 2020 Cholamandalam Investment and Finance raised subordinated Tier-II debt from CDC Group through its first issue of rupee-denominated masala bonds, which the release said might later be listed on an international exchange, the joint release said, to fund loans to small vehicle owners and micro and small enterprises in rural and semi-urban areas.

Vehicles first, then property, small business and gold.

Vehicle finance remains the core of the business. The annual report describes more than four decades of vehicle lending and a book spanning new and used commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles, two- and three-wheelers, electric vehicles, tractors, farm equipment and construction equipment. The 2020 CDC release said the company served small and medium road transport operators, with more than half of that portfolio in lower-income states, and that nearly a third of its portfolio was made up of first-time borrowers. In the 2025–26 report’s breakdown of the vehicle book, used vehicles formed the largest single share, at 27%, followed by light commercial vehicles at 18% and cars and multi-utility vehicles at 13% each.

Around that core Chola has added home loans, loans against property, SME loans, business and personal loans against collateral, consumer and small enterprise loans and consumer durable loans, the annual report says. Its newest line is gold loans, launched during the 2025–26 financial year, which operated through 119 branches in its first year, according to the report; in October 2026 The Economic Times reported that the gold loan business was running through 308 branches.

The company gives its reach in its own figures: the 2025–26 annual report counts 1,761 branches across India and more than 47.5 lakh customers. Its digital work includes Chola One, a common customer platform for servicing any product at any branch, and CholaKaart, an in-house loan origination system, both named in the same report, which adds that vehicle finance applications moved to paperless onboarding with biometric and face-based checks. English Wikipedia gives 1,820 branches across 26 states and seven union territories as of 2026.

How India’s non-bank lenders and insurers present themselves.

India’s non-bank lenders and insurers tend to present themselves with bold, simple wordmarks, often set in blue, red, orange or gold, and with a group name placed first. Many began inside larger business houses, and the finance brand keeps the family or group name while a second word says what the company does: finance, capital, life, general insurance. Bajaj Finance, for example, started in 1987 as Bajaj Auto Finance, the lending arm of a vehicle maker, and Muthoot Finance carries the name of a Kerala family business that dates its roots to 1887.

The branch remains central. Gold-loan companies, vehicle lenders and rural lenders work through offices in small towns as well as cities, and their websites lead with branch locators and with product pages for gold, vehicle, home and personal loans. The insurers in this group organise their sites around policy types such as motor and health cover.

Apps now sit beside the branch network. Customers are pointed to mobile apps for loan statements, repayments, policy documents and renewals, and the Reserve Bank of India’s digital lending rules, including the Key Fact Statements it requires lenders to give borrowers, shape how those journeys are presented.

Much of what can be checked about these brands sits in public filings. Listed lenders and insurers publish annual reports, and many add sustainability or business responsibility reports, while the Reserve Bank and the insurance regulator, IRDAI, publish their own orders and press releases. This guide relies on those documents and on dated press coverage, and marks clearly what rests only on a company’s own word.

“Enter a better life.”

Chola’s brand line is a promise about customers rather than products. The annual report sets out its vision as enabling customers to “enter a better life,” and the phrase also appeared in the managing director’s quote in the 2020 CDC release. For recruitment, the report describes an employer framework built on three short lines: “I grow here,” “I belong here” and “I matter here.” In the same report the company says it is well placed thanks to “a strong brand, deep distribution, diversified businesses, experienced teams” and a culture that balances ambition with prudence.

Ownership has changed once in a way that touched the name. English Wikipedia says that in 2005 the Singapore lender DBS Bank took a 37.5% stake and the company was renamed Cholamandalam DBS Finance. In April 2010 DBS sold its entire 37.48% stake to the Murugappa Group companies Tube Investments of India and New Ambadi Estates, raising the group’s holding to 74.96%, The Economic Times reported, citing a disclosure to the Bombay Stock Exchange. The company now operates again as Cholamandalam Investment and Finance, one of the group’s ten listed companies. In October 2026 its board approved a plan to raise further capital through a qualified institutional placement over the following six to nine months, The Economic Times reported.

For a design guide, Chola shows how a short form of a long company name can become the everyday brand of a network of more than 1,700 branches. Compare Shriram Finance, another lender built on vehicle finance, and Mahindra Finance, the lending arm of the Mahindra group. For this guide we use a brick red, a deep navy and a warm ivory with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Chola’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.