Mumbai: Remittances from urban to rural pockets revived in June after a 40 per cent decline in April, pointing to an economy emerging from lockdown-induced hibernation, although business is still about a fifth lower than what it was before the pandemic struck India last spring.India processes roughly Rs 12,000 crore to Rs 14,000 crore in monthly remittances internally. Remittance players said that with migrant labour returning to urban pockets of Maharashtra, the NCR, Gujarat and Karnataka, business is returning to normal.“We are seeing normalcy return to the remittances business; most large pockets like Western and Southern India plus the NCR region have shown growth in June,” said Yogendra Kashyap, CEO, RapiPay Fintech. “If we are able to vaccinate a bulk of our population in the coming months, we will see a rise of 10-20 per cent in this business.”RapiPay one of the largest players in this segment with an 18 per cent market share, processed domestic remittances of more than Rs 1,800 crore in June. They had processed Rs 2,500 crore worth of such transactions in March this year.The second wave of Covid-19 ravaged India in April and May, with the grip of the virus loosening in June. The surge in cases led to a significant slowdown in domestic remittances, which dropped by 40 per cent from its peak in January-February last year, prompting a large section of the migrant workforce to leave big cities.“For us, the recovery has been stellar; we are nearly approaching the pre-pandemic levels and in July we expect to surpass the pre-pandemic business levels,” said Rajeev Lal, President, PayPoint India. “The business turnaround has been much quicker as compared to the first wave; this time, the lockdowns were localised and now significantly relaxed.”PayPoint processed domestic remittances worth Rs 450 crore in June, down by almost 40 per cent in April. It had processed domestic fund transfers of more than Rs 500 crore in March 2020.Maharashtra is one of the biggest contributors to the domestic remittance industry, with a 15-20 per cent share, followed by Gujarat and Karnataka.84001333There are predominantly six major corridors within India from where a large chunk of the remittances originates: Delhi, Maharashtra, and Gujarat are among them. On the other hand, the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are among the biggest receivers of these flows.Experts say that remittance flows are a good proxy of the state of the migrant economy. While the channels to send such transfers vary largely, payment companies use NPCI’s Aadhaar enabled payment services (AePS) and direct money transfer channels such as bank-to-bank transfers through IMPS or NEFT.The silver lining has also been the cash withdrawals business, which has grown steadily despite an end to the government’s direct benefit transfers under Covid relief.