Everyone bet on PhonePe and CRED. Bajaj Finance got there first.

About this episode

The episode discusses how Bajaj Finance is leading the AI revolution in Indian finance, outpacing digital natives like PhonePe and CRED.

These days it’s fashionable to have an AI story, no matter what you do. But in December 2024, Bajaj Finance took it a few steps further. Instead of calling itself "a lender investing in AI," it started to describe itself as a "FinAI company" - a category of one, which it committed to in a five-year plan to FY29. Eighteen months in, no other Indian lender is putting AI on their slides the way Bajaj Finance is. Here are some of them : 31 million voice interactions converted into data last quarter. 27 autonomous agents live, 118 more planned. 600,000 loans on a single Diwali day, up from a pre-AI ceiling of 100,000. And next Diwali, they're aiming for a million. A few years ago, the obvious answer to who would win Indian finance's AI era was the digital natives — PhonePe, CRED, the cloud-born fintechs with no call centres and zero baggage. Instead, the company that started financing two-wheelers and still runs one of India's largest outbound calling operations is out in front. The thing that looked like Bajaj's archaic legacy is turning out to be its moat. What else did Bajaj Finance have that got it here? And how long before the others get there too? Praveen is joined by…

People in this episode

Host: Praveen

Guests: Seetharaman G, Vasuta Agarwal

Topics covered

• AI in finance
• Bajaj Finance
• digital lending
• voice interactions
• fintech competition
• data-driven strategies

Keywords

• Bajaj Finance
• AI
• fintech
• PhonePe
• CRED
• voice AI
• digital lending
• data
• loans
• autonomous agents

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bajaj Finance, PhonePe, CRED, Gnani.ai

Books & works: Intermission

More episodes of Two by Two (Private)

• ‘Free the rupee. Let it go’—How to save the market from investors · June 11, 2026 · 1h 10m
• Where are Emergent’s users? · June 4, 2026 · 1h 23m
• Amazon’s quick-commerce wildcard is Prime · May 28, 2026 · 1h 10m
• Groww beat every odd to get here. What beats it next? · May 14, 2026 · 1h 4m
• Should young designers pay senior designers to teach them? · May 7, 2026 · 1h 15m
• Hyrox gave India a finish line. What happens after you cross it? · April 30, 2026 · 1h 9m