Over 65% consumers lost income in Bengaluru: Survey

Bengaluru: Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru were the most impacted cities in terms of loss of income and loan repayment capacity due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a consumer insights report by Paisabazaar.com, India's largest digital marketplace for lending products. The survey showed Bengaluru was the second most impacted city among the top six metros, while Chennai was the least affected. Over 8,500 consumers of Paisabazaar.com between the age of 24 to 57 years from 35+ cities with a debt of Rs 1 lakh or more took part in this survey – 'Dealing with Debt: How India plans to pay EMIs'.

According to this survey, over 86% of the self-employed customers reported a loss in income due to Covid-led restrictions. In fact, more than a fourth of self-employed customers said their income had come to nil due to the pandemic and the lockdown. There was a lesser but still significant impact on salaried customers. 56% of salary earners said their salary has been impacted due to the pandemic and the resultant restrictions; 12% said they have lost their job and have no income source currently, according to the survey.

"While there was widespread impact on consumers in the first 2-3 of months of the pandemic, we believe there has been steady recovery since July. With the economy beginning to get back to its feet, incomes of customer segments employed in deeply impacted industries like Travel, Aviation, Entertainment, Hospitality etc. should start getting restored gradually. Large lenders including Banks should also grow in confidence in willing to lend to these segments. However, supply of loans to self-employed and low-income segments would take longer to recover," said Naveen Kukreja, CEO & Co-founder, Paisabazaar.com.

In Bengaluru, over 65% of residents who participated in the Paisabazaar.com survey said they had suffered a negative impact on income due to the pandemic; 12% lost their income completely.

Around 90% of self-employed Bengaluru residents and 61% of the salaried segment from the city suffered income loss, the survey revealed.

A big insight that came out of the survey was that a large section of the customers from Bengaluru who had taken the moratorium were those whose income was not impacted and had the repayment capacity. 20% of the respondents who said they availed the moratorium any time during April to August, also reported they suffered no negative income disruption during this period.

Of the salaried customers who took the moratorium, over one-third (38%) of them did not suffer any impact on their salaries. A primary reason behind this could be fear of losing their job/significant cut in salaries in the future or even plain unawareness in some cases on the interest cost one would need to borne.