We keep hearing that retail Indians are borrowing too much, but despite all the noise, credit penetration in India remains relatively low and a significant population remains credit-starved.

That said, to the extent that individual Indians do have credit, I think Bajaj Finance has done more to improve access than even many of the bigger banks. In a lot of ways, they’ve been pioneers.

They took loan approvals from 3–5 days to 3 hours to, eventually, 3 minutes. They are also great at leveraging data. They track how old your appliances are and figure out your refrigerator is about to need replacing before you’ve even thought about it, and walking into Croma or Vijay Sales with a list of 50,000 customers ready to buy. Bajaj Finance knew you better than your retailer did.

Having said that, businesses like Bajaj Finance and even Zerodha have had it relatively easy over the past decade. As India went online and consumers got access to easy credit and the ability to invest easily, we kind of rode that wave. But as the saying goes, success attracts competition. With all the new players now wanting to be lenders, including us Zerodha Capital with our secured business, the future will be interesting, to say the least.

Almost done with Episode 2 of TheKenWeb’s Intermission, and this one is on the giant that is Bajaj Finance, what it took to build that machine, and what it means for the future of credit in India. It’s free to watch. Link in comments.

Disclosure: Zerodha had a small part in the making of Intermission.

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