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India has achieved a basic level of financial inclusion, particularly through bank accounts and digital payments. However, considerable headroom remains in expanding access to broader financial services.

The next decade presents significant opportunities for fintechs, with several emerging financial-services challenges likely to be addressed by new companies.

Technology must adapt to customers—not the other way around. The next phase of financial inclusion will depend on technology simplifying products and removing barriers to access.

UPI demonstrated how existing building blocks, including smartphones and IMPS, could be combined to create transformative financial infrastructure.

Navi follows a “go deep” approach to financial services, building capabilities across the value chain instead of operating merely as a technology or distribution platform.

Delivering meaningful customer value in areas such as credit and insurance requires ownership of the underlying systems, including credit decisioning and risk models.

Companies that choose harder problems and build capabilities that are difficult to replicate are more likely to create lasting institutions.

Banks and fintechs will remain complementary. Banks provide a regulated and trusted store of value, while fintechs can specialise in delivering simpler and more convenient customer experiences.

As India’s economy and middle class expand, customer requirements will become increasingly diverse, making an evolving partnership between banks and fintechs essential.

AI represents a major technological leap, but access to AI alone will not differentiate institutions. Human judgment—particularly the ability to identify the right problem for the right customer at the right time—will remain critical.

As execution becomes increasingly democratised through AI, what companies choose to build and where they apply the technology will distinguish successful institutions.

Navi is using AI across coding, customer support, marketing and campaign optimisation. It is also deploying AI for feature engineering and developing credit and fraud-detection models.

The next phase of AI adoption will depend on organisational imagination—what companies envision AI doing and how they design systems to deliver meaningful outcomes.

Customer data should ultimately belong to the customer, but ownership becomes meaningful only when the data can be used securely to improve the customer experience.

Data interoperability should enable customers to transfer KYC, banking and transaction information between authorised institutions while maintaining appropriate privacy safeguards.

On personalisation versus manipulation, Sachin said consumers generally recognise when a product is delivering genuine value and when they are being “taken for a ride.”

Customer choice is an important test of value, as digital users can quickly move from one platform to another. However, regulatory guardrails may still be required.

Sachin traced Navi’s financial-services vision to his time at Flipkart and a conversation with Nandan Nilekani around 2015–16 about UPI’s potential.

Access to credit is essential for India to achieve its economic ambitions. Sachin described it as a fundamental need comparable to electricity, education and healthcare.

Navi’s long-term ambition is to provide access to credit to one billion people, even if achieving that goal takes several decades.

On his legacy, Sachin said he would prefer to be remembered for solving meaningful problems and making a difference, while continuing to focus on the next—and potentially bigger—problem to solve.

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