RBI granted prior approval for change in management for Gretex Industries Limited's proposed acquisition of Arpan Tie-Up Pvt. Ltd., communicated via letter dated June 25, 2026. Approval for change in control remains pending. Gretex seeks to acquire 98% of Arpan Tie-Up, an NBFC-BL, for ₹5.90 crore (₹64.78/share). Arpan Tie-Up, incorporated in 1995 in Kolkata, is a non-systemically important NBFC regulated under RBI's Scale-Based Regulation framework.

This transaction illustrates a critical regulatory mechanism under RBI's oversight of NBFCs: the bifurcated approval process for change in management versus change in control. Under RBI's Scale-Based Regulation (SBR) framework, any acquisition involving an NBFC requires separate prior approvals — one for management change and another for transfer of control — before the transaction can be consummated. This reflects RBI's intent to ensure that entities gaining control over NBFCs meet fit-and-proper criteria.

Arpan Tie-Up is classified as an NBFC-BL (Base Layer) under the SBR framework introduced in 2021, meaning it is the smallest and non-systemically important category, posing the least risk. Despite this, RBI approval is mandatory even for such acquisitions, underscoring that regulatory gatekeeping applies across all NBFC tiers.

For Gretex Industries, a trading and distribution company, acquiring an NBFC license via this route is strategically significant: it provides an existing regulatory infrastructure to enter lending and credit operations without building an entity from scratch. This approach — acquiring a dormant or low-revenue NBFC shell to gain RBI's NBFC registration — is a commonly observed corporate strategy.

The declining revenue of Arpan Tie-Up (from ₹85.61 lakh in FY23 to ₹63.30 lakh in FY25) reinforces that this is an infrastructure acquisition, not a revenue acquisition. RBI's sequential approval process protects systemic integrity even at the base layer.