Ujjivan Brand Guidelines: Urban Microfinance From 2005 & a 2017 Small Finance Bank

A lending company in Bengaluru.

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank is a bank headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Its predecessor, Ujjivan Financial Services, was founded by Samit Ghosh and, the company says, began operating in October 2005 as a non-banking financial company, aiming to offer financial services to what it called the “economically active poor” in India’s cities. The company says Ujjivan adapted the Grameen model and customised it for urban India, where its founder saw a gap between the demand for credit and its supply. It says its operations combined the high-touch microfinance model with the technology and back-office functions of a retail bank.

The route to a banking licence ran through a new category. On 16 September 2015 the Reserve Bank of India announced in-principle approval for ten applicants to set up small finance banks under guidelines issued in November 2014. Ujjivan Financial Services of Bengaluru was one of the ten, alongside lenders such as Au Financiers of Jaipur, Equitas of Chennai and Janalakshmi of Bengaluru. The approval was valid for 18 months, and until a regular licence was issued the applicants were not allowed to carry on banking business, the RBI said. Ujjivan dates its own approval to 7 October 2015. The RBI said three committees had contributed to the decision, including an external advisory committee, and that an important factor was each applicant’s proposed reach into unbanked areas and underserved sections of the population. At about that time, English Wikipedia says, citing Fortune India, Ujjivan had more than 2.6 million customers and 464 branches in 24 states.

The final approval followed on 11 November 2016, the company says. Ujjivan Financial Services had set up Ujjivan Small Finance Bank as a wholly owned subsidiary, transferred its lending business to it, and the bank began operating on 1 February 2017. After the transfer, the company says, Ujjivan Financial Services registered as a core investment company, holding the bank rather than lending itself. It is a scheduled bank, included in the Second Schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934; English Wikipedia, citing The Hindu BusinessLine, dates that status to August 2017.

From group loans to a full deposit range.

Group lending is still part of the range. The bank’s website lists Group Loans and individual micro loans beside home loans, what it calls “micro-mortgages,” gold loans, two-wheeler loans and farm lending under its Kisan Pragati Card. On the deposit side it runs from a basic savings account to a premium line called Ivory by Ujjivan, with the Garima savings account, fixed and recurring deposits and safe-deposit lockers in between.

The company’s 2019 description of the bank mentioned a phone-banking unit serving customers in eleven languages and a mobile app in five, alongside branches, ATMs and cash recyclers, and gave a customer base of 4.72 million in 24 states and union territories as of 30 June 2019. English Wikipedia, citing the bank’s own results presentation, gives 814 branches in 347 districts across 26 states and union territories as of 30 June 2026, and about 26,555 employees.

The bank went public in December 2019. English Wikipedia, citing The Indian Express, says the share offer opened on 2 December and the shares listed on the National Stock Exchange of India and the BSE on 12 December 2019. In 2024, according to English Wikipedia, the RBI gave the bank an authorised dealer category I licence, which allows it to offer foreign-exchange services.

Design and documentation.

Microfinance lenders present themselves less through products than through method. Grameen Bank’s website opens on its line “A bank for the poor” and describes loans made without collateral, with all transactions except disbursement handled at village-level centres. ASA International sets out the “ASA Model” on a page of its own, from the size of a branch to the rhythm of weekly or fortnightly collections. For these institutions the method is the brand.

Their websites are built around networks and products. They publish branch, client and village counts as dated figures, offer branch locators, and list named loans for small businesses, crops, livestock, housing and education, alongside savings accounts, pension schemes and insurance. Newer pages describe digital wallets and digital financial services, sometimes launched market by market. Where a lender’s pages show small shops, farms or field officers at work, this guide describes them in words rather than reproducing them.

Documentation is a large part of the look. Lenders publish annual reports, monthly reports, governance pages and pages on social performance or impact, and listed groups add investor sections and regulatory news. Regulators are part of the picture too: in Bangladesh, the economist Mustafa K Mujeri wrote in The Daily Star in 2025, non-governmental lenders are licensed by the Microcredit Regulatory Authority, set up under an act of 2006. Claims about what microcredit achieves are the lenders’ own, or those of prize committees and researchers, and are contested in the research literature.

This guide reads each lender from its own pages and from dated outside sources: who founded it, how its lending works, and how its name is used. The palettes here — warm oranges, greens and blues — are our own unofficial interpretations, not the lenders’ published values, and no logo, photograph or document is reproduced.

A reverse merger and a returned application.

For several years Ujjivan had two listed companies: the holding company, Ujjivan Financial Services, and the bank it controlled. In 2022, English Wikipedia says, the holding company’s board approved a reverse merger into the bank; the amalgamation was completed in 2024, with the bank allotting shares under the scheme in May that year, and Wikipedia describes the bank as fully publicly owned since then.

The next step it sought was a universal banking licence, a status that, the Free Press Journal explained, lets a lender offer a wide range of financing products instead of serving only underserved segments. Ujjivan applied to the RBI in February 2025, the Millennium Post reported. On 13 April 2026 the bank said in a regulatory filing that the RBI had returned the application: the regulator had taken note of its efforts to diversify its loan book but saw “scope for progress in this area,” and advised it to apply again after demonstrating a diversified loan portfolio, the Free Press Journal reported on 14 April 2026. The bank said it would resubmit the application in due course. The same report noted that the RBI had granted universal bank status to AU Small Finance Bank in August 2025.

For a design guide, Ujjivan shows how a lender can keep one short name while its legal form changes from finance company to small finance bank. Compare Bandhan Bank, which made the move from microfinance to a universal licence in 2015, and CreditAccess Grameen, another Indian microfinance lender. For this guide we use a deep teal, a marigold and a pale mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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