Yes Bank, the new generation private bank, is increasing its lending focus towards a small & medium enterprises (SME). In the current year YES Bank is allocating about Rs. 4,000 crore. Till the end of March, 2010, the private sector lender had lent around Rs 1,500 crore to smaller firms.

“We have seen significant increase in demand from the SME sector as the economy comes out of the downturn and have lent as much as Rs 500 crore to this segment in the January-March quarter. We plan to focus more on this space and increase our market share,” said Sanjay Agrawal, president (corporate finance & development banking) of the bank.

Till October last year, YES Bank has been disbursing SME loans only from 13 branches. But it has started such operations from 33 locations. By the end of the current year, at least 50 locations would be equipped to disburse SME loans, helping the bank access more customers. YES Bank is expanding its SME business only in those places which have a strong industrial base, such as the industrial towns of Ludhiana and Coimbatore.

Besides this Yes Bank is also looking at using online platforms to reach out to specific  SME industry clusters according to Industry sources.