SBI Chief General Manager (Personal Banking), Mr P. Nandakumaran, on Monday said that the bank would be disbursing loans worth Rs. 900 crore in response to the loan request applications for Tata's small car Nano. The amount covers 75,000 applicants, which is half of the total loan bookings.

The sales of Nano booking forms began on April 1, extending to 30,000 locations on a country wide magnitude through Tata Motors dealerships, SBI & associate banks, 15 other preferred financing banks, online booking and various Tata Group outlets such as Croma, Westside, World of Titan and Tata Indicom. The company expected huge customer demand and entered into an exclusive tie-up with SBI for managing the booking.

Mr P. Nandakumaran told that "Seventy per cent of the total bookings (2.03 lakh) announced by Tata Motors Ltd were booked through loans. SBI will be targeting about 50 per cent of the total loan bookings which will work out to about 75,000 applicant.," he also added.

Nano was primarily targeted for Tier II and Tier III towns. Contrarily, "The bookings for Nano have primarily come from urban and metro centres.", as told by Mr P. Nandakumaran.

SBI offered an exclusive Nano booking loan product for its customers from 9th April to 25th April 2009. The one-time upfront booking amounts varied as per the model (see table below).

The booking amount for SBI and various associate banks is also given -Once the customer is allocated the car, he/she would be entitled to SBI Nano car loan, at rate varying from 11.75 to 12%. The loan is extended by a margin of 15%. The repayment period can extend up to maximum of 7 years.