EY Leadership Unscripted – Leadership conversation series with industry pioneers in financial services

Leadership Unscripted | Conversations with pioneers in Financial Services

Welcome to Leadership Unscripted—where we go beyond the balance sheets and boardrooms and open the doors to conversations with leaders in the financial services sector in India —unfiltered, honest and deeply inspiring. In this multi-video talk series, Pratik Shah, Partner and National Leader – Financial Services at EY India, engages in candid, unscripted leadership conversations with the industry leaders. So, whether you are leading a team or just starting out, this leadership talk series is for you. It is about growing, listening, and leading with purpose—together.

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Episode 4: In this episode, Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO of Fino Payments Bank, shares his leadership journey, insights on building a sustainable, tech-led financial model, and the future of inclusive banking and serving digital-savvy Bharat with trust, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Intro: In this episode, Rishi Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of Fino Payments Bank, shares his transformative leadership journey—from his early days at ICICI to building one of India's most inclusive financial institutions. He discusses the evolution from a tech-led financial inclusion model to a profitable, asset-light payments bank, now poised to become a Small Finance Bank. The episode delves into ‘Bharat Banking’, the importance of sustainability, trust-building with merchants, and the critical role of technology, data, and partnerships. Gupta reflects on entrepreneurship, long-term thinking, and integrating AI to scale operations and improve security. His vision is clear: Financial services must serve the aspirational, digital savvy ‘Bharat’ with seamless, secure, and dignified access.

Pratik Shah: Leadership. It is more than just a title. It is a journey shaped by decisions, fueled by experiences, and defined by stories. And some of the most powerful stories are the ones you have not heard, just yet. The stories are real, the insights are game-changing, and the leaders, they are right here. I am excited. Welcome to Leadership Unscripted. Today, we are joined by a dear friend, Mr. Rishi Gupta, MD and CEO at Fino Payment Bank. He has got an extensive background in finance and a very deep commitment to sustainable finance and financial inclusion. He is a very passionate person when it comes to reaching the last mile or ‘Bharat Banking’, as I might call it. Rishi, thank you so much for joining us.

Rishi Gupta: Thank you, Pratik. Thank you for Leadership Unscripted.

Pratik Shah: I really want to know Rishi, more than anything else, how do you see things? Having known you, I am really looking forward to this conversation. So, Rishi, just going back a few years in your journey, tell us about your formative years and how you entered financial services before we fast forward to Fino Payments Bank of today.

Rishi Gupta: Thank you, Pratik. I come from Delhi. I did my school and college from there. I was in SRCC. I did Commerce there. Most of the conversations in SRCC were on financial services, finance or around that. After that, did my Chartered Accountancy. At that time, the 1992-1993 scam had happened, and there were not many opportunities in financial services anyway. The financial services industry was very, very small compared to the size which we have currently, and the opportunities and options were very limited. So, I joined Maruti for a couple of years, but my dream was always to work in a financial services company. At that point in time, there was an opportunity in ICICI Ltd which became the bank in 2002. During that period, I joined the project finance team of ICICI Ltd and then we became part of the ICICI Bank. During that time also, I had this vision in terms of that I wanted to work in the bank, I wanted to work in the financial services. When I was in Maruti, I used to go to the office thinking that at some point I would move, switch from manufacturing to financial services, and that gave me an opportunity in 1996 when I joined ICICI Ltd and never looked back after that. Somehow the passion for numbers and the interest in financial services really drove me into this field.

Pratik Shah: You joined the leadership factory at ICICI Bank. I think everyone who has been in ICICI Bank and in project finance is in a leadership role. Tell me more about the time you spent in ICICI Bank.

Rishi Gupta: I was in the Delhi office in the zonal office of ICICI Ltd. Sandeep (Bakhshi), who is the current deputy CEO of ICICI Bank, was the zonal head at that point of time. A lot of independence was given to the team, and a lot of good quality, very high standards, professional skills of people, were there. And the depth of the people and the depth of the knowledge and the engagement which we used to have with founders, CEOs, CFOs for project finance gave us that exposure. I think the depth of leadership comes from the fact that ICICI really puts you into the grind. And they let you swim in the deep waters. And then over a period, because of the hardship and the difficulties and the exposure you get, it grooms you. A lot of it goes into the DNA of the organization. The way ICICI has built leaders, one after the other. There is so much of depth in ICICI leadership and you would see across all financial services companies and you will find plenty of people from ICICI who are at very senior roles and in fact at the CEO in many organizations. I think the way the organization takes care of you and grooms you over a period really makes you very different.

Pratik Shah: And you are one of those. Startup is a new word, but you are really the startup guy when it comes to financial services. When it comes to Fino Paytech and then Fino Payment Bank and that entire journey, a very different unconventional model, if I may say so, as compared to when we talk about traditional banking. The first thing we think about is a branch and you sort of revolutionized that, saying, yes, there is financial inclusion, but we do not need to think about the branch. So that is about the startup mindset. Where did that come from?

Rishi Gupta: You are right. So, when we started in 2006, at that point of time, I had moved away from ICICI and joined IFC Washington Delhi office, and then this opportunity came in. ICICI started to look at how they can deepen financial inclusion, and under Nachiket (Mor), who was the Executive Director with the bank at that time, he was entrusted to set up a remote banking side of an ecosystem. They decided that let it be a separate company rather than being part of ICICI. At that point of time, our vision was how do we deepen financial services. And in 2006, there was no word as startup. It only came around 2008-2009, after the Flipkarts of the world started to grow. During that point, we started a company and ICICI put in seed capital into the company. And then over the next five to seven years, we brought in more investors like IFC, Blackstone and some of the other investors at the holding company level. The thought process at that point of time was how do we make it sustainable?

While we were coming up, we thought that ICICI is behind us, but they were not thinking that way. We have put in seed capital, now you guys run your company. ICICI has built a lot of companies in which they have invested and let the leaders or the founding team to flourish and grow the business. From a setup like IFC where we had everything, we never had to really think about salaries and how do we manage the expenses to a setup, to where we had to manage the expenses and salaries. Seed capital was only capital. It could only take us that much time into the journey. That is how we started to build up the entire business. And we realized very early in our life as a new company that everybody is on its own and we have to build it from scratch. And fortunately for us, we got a lot of people who supported us in the journey. When we used to go to a bank, to get some financial inclusion mandate, that we would set up a doorstep banking for you. They would ask us then how can you set up a doorstep banking? Because the customers must come to the branch and that is how the transaction happens. We have never seen a model, no matter where you will go, where the bank goes to the customer's home or closer to his home. And you will enable transactions with security systems and technology.

At that time, India was in a very different zone. What we are visualizing today or what we are doing today, visualizing it 15 to 18 years back was very difficult. To get people to realize that it is possible and to entrust the young team to make it possible was difficult. Banking, it is not a very easy business and a lot of trust of the customer and a lot of security systems have to be built in. We got good mandate from public sector banks and other private sector banks. So, we started that journey and that is how the entire build-up happened. Coming from our DNA, where we thought sustainability is key to our strength. We always built up a business in which we can eventually make some money, doing business with a social purpose was never our objective.

Pratik Shah: How difficult was it to convince a lot of folks around the vision of what you want to achieve yet be profitable, yet achieve the financial inclusion objective? Because, a lot of folks are opinionated in banking, in terms of that they believe that there is only one way of banking that needs to be done. How was that part?

Rishi Gupta: I would say now it looks very simple, but the struggle was there. Getting the right audience in some of the banks was also very difficult. But fortunately, we got some of the leaders like Mr. M.V. Nair, CMD of Union Bank, Mr. B. Sambamurthy who was with Corporation Bank, Mr. Chakraborty who was with Indian Bank. So, luckily, we had the people. And also, ICICI Bank. ICICI Bank with these three people helped us to get mandate with some banks. But getting within them also was very difficult. I remember we used to go meet General Managers. They said this kind of banking we have not seen. So how will it work? We can understand you are a technology company, but our people will not go door to door to do banking services. You will have to put a team together. So, we built up a Section 25 company who was into servicing. That is how we went from a technology company to a services company because you have to go there on the ground to actually make that happen. It was quite difficult for people to visualize that you can do banking in a pocket or doorstep banking kind of terminologies were thrown at us.

Eventually, I think the success started to come in when people started to use these services and merchants started to come in. But it was a very pathbreaking event. And coming to your part of sustainability, this model itself ensured that we eventually have to make money. Technology was on our side. When we started at that point in time, 2G was there, connectivity was not good, electricity issues were still there, identity problem was there. But 2009-2010 onwards, the entire Aadhaar Stack came in, and the Jio effect started to roll in. Then NPCI came out with a lot of technology interventions. That helped us to make it scalable. So, before India Stack came up, we were doing a sizable amount of business, but the scale at which we are today would not have been possible without that.

Pratik Shah: Through this experience, most of the banking that you do is about touching ‘Bharat’. You are working very closely with merchants, kirana shops, from PayTech to the Small Finance Bank, you have really been acting as mini banks. Can you share some anecdotes as you meet the kirana shops or folks at the merchants? How have some of their lives changed? I am asking this because for our viewers who are used to the traditional banks in urban places, your experiences will be very good for them, too.

Rishi Gupta: It is a very different world the moment you move out of your cozy offices. Even where we are now, if you look down, you will see a lot of the slums. But these customers also need to be serviced. They had a big challenge, which we call ‘CSR - convenience, simplicity, and respect’. We built a model around CSR, we want to make it convenient so that the customer can come at 7 a.m. in the morning till 10 p.m. in the night, because the merchants are open. They have a kirana shop or any other shop where they walk in and get serviced. The customers already come to buy some groceries or do some activity or buy some recharge or something. But during that process, the merchant actually pitches to the customer – do you want to transfer money, do you want to withdraw cash, do you want to open an account or if you want to do any other banking services? I have got Fino, and I can enable banking services for you. So, building the trust of the customer and also the trust of the merchant.

In India, level of entrepreneurship is very high. We look at entrepreneurship only at our level. But you go down and you see all those small, small shops. All of them are entrepreneurs. They are building businesses. They know how to run businesses. Even if they are not very educated, they understand the value of money. They understand the denomination, even the customers understand it. They want to make something extra. They also look at stickiness of customer and how a customer will come in. If a customer is coming to buy groceries and in the same process if they can withdraw cash rather than going to an ATM, it helps them. Next time, if the customer will come to withdraw cash from the shop, they might buy something as well. From a customer point of view, a walk-in customer is converted into a sticky customer and the merchants also make money in the process. Because he already has cash with him, he does not need more cash to circulate. So, from a merchant point of view, it is an accumulation of income, creation of jobs for them. From the customer point of view, it is convenience. Very simple.

Through the Aadhaar platform authentication, you open an account, you can do transactions, a lot of respect because you do not need to wait in any other branch. If you go rural, the more you travel deep, maybe 50-100 kilometers outside the metros, you will see that the number of branches and the condition of branches and the kind of footfall in the branches is super high. In that, if the customer has to wait for two or three hours, the entire day is wasted. Here, it is done in a few minutes. So, he saves his travel time. A lot of convenience and simplicity and a lot of respect has been built in the model both for customers as well as the merchants because the merchant also becomes like a banker. “Main toh banker babu hoon.” He gets the respect in his village. So, it is in this model in which all the stakeholders, whether it is the customer or the merchant or intermediaries or banks like us, all of us benefit because we create this inclusion. The entire model of payments bank was designed to deepen financial inclusion, and I think it does serve the purpose.

Pratik Shah: Just cracking this model, getting merchants to think to get customers in. The technology that you build around this. There are organizations that spend so much money around technology, you build a technology which is frugal while still serving this purpose. When you thought about this and when you brought it all together, were there folks who challenged it? Who were naysayers, who said this cannot be done? I just want to hear, when all of this was getting built what were you thinking?

Rishi Gupta: See, if I go back to 2006, 2007, that time the challenge was much more. And because there was no technology stack, there was no Aadhaar stack, even telecommunications were not present in rural India. From that point of view, the challenges were far more. If I fast forward to the payments bank in 2016-2017, the concept of payments bank is that you deepen financial services, you provide them basic transaction services, open an account, and take some small deposit. But you cannot lend. How can there be a bank which does not lend? There were a lot of naysayers that this model will not work. Eleven licenses were issued and only six of them became functional. From the beginning, five people dropped out. That further accentuated the bad situation. How will the payments bank model run? We were very sure in terms of that these are the boundary conditions, these are the guardrails under which the license has been issued. And we have to make it. And, as I said, sustainability is in our DNA. So, we thought that to build this, we have to keep our costs very, very low.

Fortunately, the Aadhaar Stack and all came around the same time. Even the Supreme Court allowed Aadhaar usage for financial services around the same time. So, all of them came together and we built up a super-efficient, cost-effective, state-of-the-art technology kind of platform. And we thought through technology only, we can reach the last minute because you need to provide them safety, security, and speed. All the three have to be there. If a customer is giving you money, trust has to be built in. So, from that point of view, we said we will have to build up a low-cost model. If you go through a branch model and tried making branches, do servicing, then how many branches? And we were competing with the telecommunications companies who got the payments bank license, and they have a very fast distribution. So, we said let's build upon the asset model. It is a believable model. A part of our income will be shared with the merchant. The merchant also makes money and you are also making money, but you do not run a very heavy fixed cost. So the building of the asset-light model at a very low operating cost was the basic theme on which we built up the entire business for the bank.

Technology was the biggest thing, which we call DTP – distribution, technology, and partnerships. Large distribution because you need to be a pan-India scalable business. Technology is at the center of everything and through partners. Now we have more than 50 partners through which we do multiple services, whether it is banking services or cash management or payment services. The entire DTP approach helped us to build up the payments bank model.

In fact, we were the first payments bank which got the private sector schedule license. We also were the first to become profitable. We were also the first to list and the only one to list. We are the only one which is a tax-paying payments bank from this year onwards. We have become profitable in the last three to four years. But we have written back all our losses. So we have become profitable and so we must pay tax to the government.

Pratik Shah: Given now you have become taxpaying, it is time for the government to give back to you. And I think there is maturity now with the whole digital infrastructure. So from receiving money to being able to lend money - what is the thought there, assuming license and everything is in place?

Rishi Gupta: From a payments bank perspective, the payments bank licenses came 10 years back. And during that process, the entire payment ecosystem has completely changed. You can see with the advent of fintech companies, the UPI stack, and a lot of other payment offerings have come up. So we feel that the payments ecosystem in future needs to be added with something more. We have applied to RBI for a Small Finance Bank license last year and we are hopeful that we will get the license in some time. Our objective of payments bank to Small Finance Bank continues with the same DNA: from a Business Correspondent to a payments bank.

As a Small Finance Bank we will continue with the same DNA we have which largely revolves around the triple-D strategy - which is distribution, data, and digital. So, we have a large distribution of about 700,000-800,000 road merchants and under 10 lakh partner merchants. We have customer data of 1.4 crore customers. As of now, nearly another 2 crore customers come to our platform every month to do various transactions. And nearly 40- 45 lakh of that 1.4 crore customers are also digital. So, I am also able to build a lot of UPI history. And the merchant also has a lot of data. So the entire data, digital and the distribution model will actually take us home. And we want to build up a very low cost, again, asset-light model as a Small Finance Bank. If I were to be a Small Finance Bank like any other Small Finance Bank, there is no real interest and excitement in that. There are 10, you will see, maybe probably 11 (such banks). What difference does it make? We want to create a very differentiated approach in this. It would be like just like the way we have done in payments bank. Let's hope so.

We have a lot of plans which are in books as of now and we are waiting for the green signal, and then we will probably start rolling it out. But I have said that as payments bank, we want to be a bullet train. But when it comes to a Small Finance Bank or lending, we want to be a goods train. Goods train ki tarah chalenge. Koi jaldi nahi hai.

Pratik Shah: Stop at every stop and make sure to learn, build and then grow. Wishing you luck with that. And I am sure it is about to happen soon. Fingers crossed for that. The reason I was asking all these questions, there is a combination of leadership, but a lot of entrepreneurial streaks that I see every time I interact with Rishi. You think like an entrepreneur. What would be your advice to some of our younger viewers who look at a career in financial services and otherwise? To build an unconventional business like you have built, it takes a lot of conviction in your mind. Time, conviction, and patience - which is very difficult to find in today's generation. Your advice for them?

Rishi Gupta: One important question is whether you are looking at it from an entrepreneurship point of view or that of an employee. At some point, I think the younger generation, which is there now, even if they are working as an employee, they start thinking like an entrepreneur and they want to do something more. The cut copy paste model with which we grew up is not the model which everybody wants to follow.

When I look at the entrepreneurship journey in today's world or for the younger generation, I think what is important is the fact that it must build over a period. This SMS or Instagram reel kind of a mindset in businesses and especially when it comes to financial services, probably will not hold. And I have seen a lot of fintech and other companies which have come up, but they have lacked governance as such. So, building of a model which is well-governed, which is compliant, which is well regulated in a way, and you have the systems in place to manage it, I think takes a lot of conviction, the ability to say, no, it is not very easy to come. The fact that the younger generation does not have that kind of patience to build it over a longer period, that is where some people take shortcuts. I would say there are no shortcuts to success. You will have to go through the same rigor. The more you invest in building up the team, the more you invest in getting the right products and right audience to whom you want to sell and with the right compliance and governance mindset. I think that is the only way in financial services business, you can succeed. Compared to other businesses, which are in consumer and other businesses it is easy. Governance is there in every business, but being regulated makes life a little bit more difficult.

So, I would say that anybody who is getting into a financial services business, especially in this new generation, must come with a 15-20-years view. Coming with a two-, three-, five-year view will not give you good results. Short-term successes could be there, but not over the long term. You are building businesses; you would serve people. And banks are built over generations. It takes decades for the banks to actually come up and the same is true for other financial services as well.

Pratik Shah: I think all relevant points for folks to think about, thinking long term, having that conviction of sticking to what you stand for, building with the right design principles. Tell me, how is it with your leadership team? If they had to describe a day with Rishi Gupta, how does that pan out? Are you impatient? I have seen you, but for the viewers - definition of a leader is very different in minds of people in terms of what a leader is, what a leader looks like, how do leaders manage large teams? That is the reason I am asking you this question.

Rishi Gupta: A lot of leaders, especially in our levels are not built overnight. It is built over 25, 30 years of journey. I do not know whether you have read this book, ‘Atomic Habits’ (‘Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones’), which says that a habit is built over a period and multiple things are part of it. My entire grooming, I would say, it started from school itself. I was not a very good student up to a particular class. And then all of a sudden, I started liking the subject. Then that is how I started to develop interest in Finance and built up my education curriculum. And then I joined Maruti.

If you are working in an automobile industry, the amount of detailing you have to do and the discipline it needs. If you are not there at the machine shop, piling will happen. So, the discipline of punching your card at 9 a.m. in the morning, every day is something which is very difficult in today's generation. Discipline, detailing and the ability to learn came from the early days in Maruti. And then I was fortunate to have an excellent set of people at ICICI with very, very deep knowledge, super, super good group of people. A lot of my principles around doing business come from Sandeep (Bakhshi). I have known him for more than 30 years now. A lot of his thinking, he has been sharing as a boss, and he was our Chairman also for Fino Paytech for many years. So, a lot of those thinking and designs have been built into me, over the last 30 years. Whether it is humility, whether it is getting to the detailing, whether it is giving freedom to people at relevant times, I think a lot of those elements have come over a period of time.

And the fact that you have to give room to your employees and you cannot be doing their job. So, my principle of doing business is that I do not get into their shoes. I do not get into doing what they are doing. Because there are only so many hours in a day, I have to keep my hours free so that I can think for the future. My job as CEO is to think more strategic rather than doing more execution. We have people in execution. So, if you do not have trust in your people, then you might as well not have them. But if they are there, you have to give them the job so that they can do it. You can guide them, help them, but do not make their responsibility as your responsibility. They have to do their job, and you are supposed to do your job. My principles are around that fact that you have to make everybody accountable and make them responsible, but also give them freedom. I do not keep myself super busy, throughout the day, calling for meetings, calling for everything. Everything is delegated. And there are people who are taking individual decisions and doing their job.
Pratik Shah: Taking a step forward, if you take 2030 or next five years, a lot of folks have talked about the future of banking. But you are servicing ‘Bharat’. What trends are you seeing in ‘Bharat’ and therefore how will banking evolve to serve that ‘Bharat’ in the next five years?

Rishi Gupta: The rural India is a big believer of DIY and is very aspirational. Even in Mumbai, a driver or a maid would like to make payments through UPI, because they see their bosses/ their employers do that. That is how the aspiration will actually drive. Rural Indians are more hungry. Like when India was in the 1960s/ 1970s, a lot of Indians went abroad and settled as they were really hungry and they really worked hard to build their lives and the lives of the kids, which we see today. The same is with the rural Indians. The general population is much, much hungrier than our folks in urban metros.

Pratik Shah: I do want to emphasize on a lot of things that you mentioned, there are a lot of nuggets of wisdom here. The future customer in the next five years is a lot more informed, is a lot more impatient. The rural India is a lot more aspirational. Is digital savvy. Banking is going to be as invisible as it can be in terms of day-to-day, and they have no qualms in doing it themselves because that is how they feel that they are really being savvier. The way the banks, Fino or otherwise, the way the banks will have to approach them will be very, very different as well.

Rishi Gupta: It has to be. Even in lending. Payments and accounts have moved to digital in a big way. But lending has not. I was told that a lot of land records and Indian Stamp payments and everything is also getting digitized. So, when it becomes digital, the amount of ease which will come in doing those hypothecations for lending documents will also become much easier.

Pratik Shah: Now with the Agri Stack anyways, a lot of the agricultural data records are getting digitized, the crop, the acreage, the yield is all getting digitized to the Agri Stack. So, I am really hoping that in the next four or five years, especially with your sustainable and financial inclusion goals, you could have a situation where a fruit vendor gets a loan during the start of the day, does his transactions at the end of the day, makes the payment and can keep running the business and keep growing the business. One example of this was a coconut seller in Delhi. His name is Papu. He sits in Shalimar Bagh. I visited him three weeks back. He has our QR code and accepts payments through that. I saw his account. He already has INR50,000 deposited in the bank in the first 15 days of the month. He said he is depositing this money for his daughter’s wedding. He said, “I will not withdraw this. The payments I receive in cash are sufficient for running my day-to-day business. This money, I am going to keep it.” So, he becomes the perfect case for lending tomorrow. If he wants to grow his business, we can lend him money because the transaction data is already getting captured in his bank account. If you visualize this 10-20 years in the future, maybe not even that but in the next 5 years, a big transformation is going to happen on the lending side.

Pratik Shah: Not only lending, I think the ancillary pieces around insurance, mutual funds, coverage, shares etc. to do financialization of the savings, that is the real India that is waiting to be served.

Rishi Gupta: The gap between ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ is collapsing. Salary differences are still there. But the way they do business and the way that we do business is going to collapse at some point of time.

Pratik Shah: I think that is what is the most exciting opportunity.

Rishi Gupta: Six hundred million people who have been deprived or did not have the data or the way to borrow money now will be able to have access to it. It is a big opportunity, and it is sitting in front of us.

Pratik Shah: It positions you and your business model very uniquely because while there are a lot of financial services companies that are focused on covering India, I think being always Bharat-focused allows you to live a very different experience.

Rishi Gupta: Bharat is not about rural India, it is there in Mumbai also- the drivers, the maids etc. That is the larger set of the population we are focusing on. It is not a very glamorous business. You will not see us in billboards in other places. But yes, it is a business where you get to make money and you have a social impact.

Pratik Shah: It is very fulfilling as well. How from your business standpoint, are you planning to think about leveraging artificial intelligence in the next three or four years as you grow?

Rishi Gupta: We are already quite active on machine learning and data analytics. Artificial intelligence is the next step in that. We have picked up three or four areas where we are looking at, especially when it comes to fraud management, fraud detection - the entire framework around fraud, that is one area. The second is we are also looking at other CRM tools. We are looking at a system which is also linked to the call center and how do we make it better, how do we make the culture and the lives better? I think the third area which we are focusing on is on the information security on the IT side. IT management, security management, cybersecurity, the entire docket around it. AI has multiple usages. We believe it will help us to do our business better and as we scale our business, for every scale-up we do not need to add so many people. Through AI we will be able to probably do it better and within the cost. There will be an initial investment because of the AI development but I think it will be over a period of time. I do not see any bank or any of the businesses survive in the next 10 years without bringing AI at the core. If technology was the core of business few years ago, now it is artificial intelligence.

Pratik Shah: Absolutely, you are very right. Will shift gears to our second segment, which is Flash Finesse. It is our take on rapid fire questions. These are things that first come to your mind and all are good answers. So, fire away. One word to describe Fino’s impact to the society?

Rishi Gupta: Very difficult to say. I think ability to do banking at the doorstep.

Pratik Shah: Describe your leadership style in one word.

Rishi Gupta: Family.

Pratik Shah: I have seen that. I have seen that the entire team operates like a family. What is the first thing you do when you go to the office?

Rishi Gupta: I check my emails.

Pratik Shah: One risk you took in life that paid off?

Rishi Gupta: Moving from Delhi to Mumbai when my children were still in school. To move from a joint family to a nuclear family. From a house in Delhi to a two-bedroom, hall, kitchen in Mumbai.

Pratik Shah: One piece of advice you will give your younger self.

Rishi Gupta: Be more risk-taking.

Pratik Shah: If there was one leader you would want to have a coffee with or a chat like this, who would that be?

Rishi Gupta: Ratan Tata.

Pratik Shah: Best advice you ever received and use it day to day?

Rishi Gupta: You are in a position and somebody else was in that position before you. So do not get too attached to the position. It is like a hotel room. When you move into a hotel room, you do not spend time and it is not like a home. Do not get too attached to it. It will become difficult for you. You are here, tomorrow it will be somebody else. It is a flow.

Pratik Shah: Big data or human intuition?

Rishi Gupta: Actually, both. When I look internally, I look at data, it really helps me to take more informed decisions. And I put human decision based on that data.

Pratik Shah: Early bird or night owl?

Rishi Gupta: Early bird.

Pratik Shah: Big picture or finer details?

Rishi Gupta: Big picture.

Pratik Shah: Street food or fine dining?

Rishi Gupta: Street food. I am a foodie and whenever I go to Delhi, I have all the street food.

Pratik Shah: On that note, thank you so much Rishi for joining us today. Very useful insights for our audience. Thank you so much for being here.

Rishi Gupta: Thank you so much, Pratik and all the best for your Leadership Unscripted.

Episode 3: In this episode, Paroma Chatterjee, CEO of Revolut India, shares her leadership journey, lessons from fintech and e-commerce, and the power of EQ. She explores building compliant, purpose-led innovation from India and shaping inclusive, secure, global digital banking.

Intro: Welcome to the third episode of Leadership Unscripted. In this episode, Pratik Shah, Partner and National Leader - Financial Services, EY India, hosts Paroma Chatterjee, CEO Revolut India. She shares her journey from launching co-branded cards at ICICI Bank to leading one of the world’s highest-valued fintechs. Drawing from her diverse experience across banking, telecom, and e-commerce, she discusses the power of EQ in leadership, building global-scale innovation from India, and the importance of compliance-led growth. Paroma reflects on the cultural and creative influences that shape her leadership style, the future of digital banking, and the shift toward inclusive, secure, cross-border financial ecosystems.

Pratik Shah: Leadership. It is more than just a title. It is a journey shaped by decisions, fuelled by experiences, and defined by stories. And some of the most powerful stories are the ones you have not heard, just yet. The stories are real, the insights game changing, and the leaders, they are right here. I am excited.

Welcome to Leadership Unscripted. Today, I am excited to host Paroma Chatterjee, CEO of Revolut India. She has been leading the company for the last four years. She has been in the top 100 most influential women in FinTech for four years. It is my pleasure to host her today. Today's conversation is not only going to be unscripted, but also full of new, innovative, wacky ideas. And I am trying to do my best to get into Paroma's mind. I have known her for a while, and she has amazing energy that fills the room with a very different way of thinking. Paroma, firstly, thank you very much for joining us today at Leadership Unscripted. Thank you for taking time.

Paroma Chatterjee: Thank you so much for having me here, Pratik. It is amazing to be here. I look forward to the conversation, though you have set the benchmark right off the bat.

Pratik Shah: Big congratulations. Four years in a row, top 100 women in the FinTech magazine is no mean feat. And you have been doing it consistently. So big congratulations.

Paroma Chatterjee: Thank you, Pratik. It is quite humbling to be counted among the top leaders who are shaping FinTech. But I would draw more satisfaction from being featured in top 100 leaders overall beyond top 100 women.

Pratik Shah: Very soon. That is exactly where you are headed.

Paroma Chatterjee: Thank you.

Pratik Shah: Paroma, as the CEO of a fantastic FinTech that has made waves globally and leading that entire franchise in India, what is the overall thought process behind how Revolut is looking at India or how they want to leverage the Indian platform?

Paroma Chatterjee: For how Revolut is looking at India, I will have to take you back four years, a rewind, back to 2021. At that time, Revolut was all of six years old, but a very exciting new kid on the block in the world of financial services. It was present at that time across 22 countries, largely across the UK and Europe. And they had got their latest Series E funding, where SoftBank and Tiger Global came in with US$350 million and US$450 million, respectively. The orientation with which that funding came ,in that particular round was to take Revolut beyond the shores of the UK and Europe to the big frontiers of Asia Pacific, specifically South Asia and India, which are acknowledged globally as among the biggest frontiers of financial services, and the others - Latin America with Brazil and Mexico. That was one orientation.

The second orientation was product suite expansion beyond just the core products that Revolut was doing. Against that backdrop, they started looking to enter India. And that is when I had some fabulous conversations with the founders and decided to jump onto this bandwagon and take on the challenge of starting from laying the foundation to building what Revolut is today and what Revolut will be tomorrow in India.

In terms of the specific thought process around that, I think India is looked upon by most global companies and financial services companies as a place where a lot of innovation has happened in the last decade or so. But if anybody can take a slice of the pie, that becomes a significant contributor to that company's customer base. So, Revolut has a stated objective of getting to 100 million customers by 2030. And it looks at India being able to contribute at least a quarter of that. So that is the perspective from a customer acquisition point of view.

Revolut’s ethos, which has been there in every single country that Revolut has launched in, is to eventually be able to bring all Revolut’s products, along with their innovative edge, into every market. So even in India, the orientation is to eventually bring the products that Revolut is known and acclaimed for globally, all the product suite, for consumers in India over time.

Those were from a business and product lens. And while we started building for those products in India, we realized the kind of talent that is available in India, which is high-end talent on product consulting, strategy, tech, all of that. And Revolut then decided to make this the first hub outside of its original London hub, to bring on the talent that is available in India, to actually start building for the rest of the markets that Revolut is present in.

That is the three-pronged orientation. One underlying philosophy that continues to remain for Revolut even here is, we could have decided, like a lot of the fintechs have done, in the interest of speed and a quick go-to-market, to partner with banks and other financial institutions and distribute their product on our platform and gain market entry. But we decided to go the more painful, if you will, but longer and steadier path, to actually get our own licenses to be able to build our own products, be able to control the customer experience the way we want to differentiate, and be able to bring that differentiated offering out.

Pratik Shah: Which means a lot in terms of committed to India, wanting to be here from a longer-term standpoint.

Paroma Chatterjee: Oh, yes! So, from that standpoint, a couple of other things that Revolut has done are upfront investment in technology and localization. So as you would know, being in financial services, one of the things that global companies are required to do is localize their entire data stack for India, so that no data goes overseas, no customer data, no personally PII information, no transaction information. And we all know of actions that have happened for certain global companies for certain components that had not been adequately localized. It is a long painstaking process. For a lot of global financial services companies, it has taken years and a lot of investment to localize the tech stack over time and that is an upfront investment that Revolut has made.

Pratik Shah: That speaks volumes of the commitment.

Paroma Chatterjee: Absolutely, and that has resulted in gaining enormous credibility with the ecosystem over here, that a company who comes in wanting to take licenses, puts the entire compliance framework first, proactively seeks to get regulated and localizes its tech stack upfront, invests in a high-quality team of people with financial services background who come in to build all of this. I think the foundation that is being laid is extremely strong.

Pratik Shah: You have worked in a range of organizations — ICICI Bank, Kotak (Mahindra Bank), Airtel Money and Flipkart. How have all your past experiences and learnings made you the leader that you are today?

Paroma Chatterjee: One of the first learnings from our home environment, and I come from a middle-class Bengali family, where one of the ethics taught to us and became core and second nature, was the value of education, knowledge and learning over chasing more material outcomes of a flash value or a tag or monetary success. The second learning is from the education institutions that I have been fortunate to have been a part of, which inculcated a liberal open-minded attitude in me and which I continue to hold on to. The entire thing about being open to new learnings, being able to adapt, learning from anywhere in the world, any section of society, any other company, any other industry, and bringing that on and building it into your ethos and your products and your strategy. So, be open to sharing the learnings that you have inculcated from whatever business or your experiences, with the larger world because then others benefit and you grow as an industry overall.

Pratik Shah: Which is very true for financial services of today, if you want to be relevant — be open rather than just thinking about what A bank did vis-a-vis B bank because today you are really learning from a very wide set of peers, not necessarily financial services.

Paroma Chatterjee: The first company that I worked for, which you mentioned, ICICI Bank, I was associated with launching the first co-branded cards in India. Now you think about it, when I joined at that time —I suddenly feel old when I speak about it as I joined more than two decades ago — the entire bank had all of 10,000 card customers. This was the era when our parents got a Diner's card after they had become successful in life, when they were in their 50s. That was the backdrop against which ICICI Bank decides, let us go get a hundred thousand cards and they give the brief to a group of 22-year-old management trainees who were clubbed together to go after this kind of an agenda. It may sound out of the world but yes that made us think differently. That iss what I meant by openness of learning. I could have looked at it as purely data. You know, sit on a computer, go through data, look at Excel and go and say okay this category of payments is what we should create a product around and build something on that. Instead, I went around on Linking Road in Mumbai. If you know what I am talking about. You are from Mumbai. I spent time observing how people are shopping. So, I think, the second thing that has continued through the institutions that I have been associated with whether from an education point of view or from a work point of view have encouraged me to be very open about trying innovation.

Pratik Shah: I see a lot of EQ and empathy in the way you crafted it.

Paroma Chatterjee: I think that to be a good leader, EQ is as important as IQ and it is fairly underrated. We index over IQ in our early years of career thinking that is what is going to get us to grow. It does get us to grow in the early years of the career when your IQ gets tested on your competence, but EQ needs to be developed over time.

Pratik Shah: Especially in this part of the world.

Paroma Chatterjee: I remember one of my IIM professors who used to teach us organizational behaviour. He went on to become the dean of one of the other IIMs subsequently. That was one of the classes for which a lot of people would not turn up because they thought that corporate valuation, quantitative ability and management… those kinds of courses are the important ones which we need to work for and these ones we can sleep through and get a grade. But he had said something in class which stayed with me – today, you may not realize it but 20 years later, if, God willing, you get a chance to be at the top of a company, you will realize this is probably the single most important course that will be relevant at that point of time.

Pratik Shah: Fintech in India has gone through its own evolution from the hype to funding to competition with financial services and the larger banks to collaboration. As a leader, where do you see the fintech place evolving and if we fast forward to next four five years, where will the financial services market evolve to and how the fintech vis-a-vis the traditional banks will play out? Your thoughts.

Paroma Chatterjee: I think it is going to evolve into two segments of fintech and techfin. Today, it is a conglomerate. I think we have some 10,732 fintechs on record, as of when I had seen the data last. But it is an aggregation of different people who look at different parts of the pie. Somebody could be a proper regulated licensed fintech. What that means is offering a certain product which is regulated and licensed in a tech-first manner to somebody else, who could be a technology provider and who is an enabler to the rest of the financial services. And I think that that difference is going to become sharper. And there is going to be a set of fintechs who offer financial services in a technology-first manner and a set of techfins who provide the tech backbone to other companies who provide financial services. That is one thing that I certainly see happening.

The second thing, where I think we still have some way to go, maybe a decade, I do not know, maybe five years, but I do see a full-fledged digital bank become a reality over time. Today, it is not in India but it is there in certain parts of the globe. But what do I mean by a true digital bank? Today, fintechs have different licenses and somebody offers a domestic payment wallet. Somebody offers a digital lending service. Somebody offers a digital wealth management service, etc. But somebody who offers end-to-end retail banking services without the need of a physical bank branch or the need to withdraw cash or the need to write cheques or take demand drafts out. If you look at the data of consumer behavior on how much cash is being withdrawn vis-a-vis how many cheques are being written to how many drafts are being issued, I think consumer behavior is orienting towards being digital only. And particularly with the demographics changing of the sub-25-year-olds right now and that is the segment that is going to keep growing. The people who are coming into the banking or bankable segment, who are going to become 18-plus, are all digital natives. They are digital-first. They think of anything digital first. They order something on the app before going down to a corner store. Whereas our generation went through the transition of going down to the corner store to pick up the eggs and bread to making it a habit to download the app. From flagging down a taxi on the road to hailing it on the app. But this new generation that is coming up, they are digital first. They have not seen the other side. And I do not think they see the need to do it because they are looking for the most convenient way to do it and the most secure way to do it. As long as the industry is able to deliver on convenience and affordability along with the security, I think that is the way in which it is going to go and consumer is always the trendsetter and they are always the king. What they want is what we will be doing as an industry. I think that will become another reality.

The other thing that I see emerging is a lot more cross-border alignment and engagements because even in India today, we have touched 25 lakh crore of UPI transactions. It sounds mind-boggling. But it is all within India on domestic payments. There is this whole global ecosystem of money moving out and money coming in which is waiting to be disrupted. And that is where we are working. But that is the next area which I think is going to get disrupted because I know there are cross-border regulatory conversations and panels also now where they are trying to align on some kind of a common standard. Like passport was arrived at as a common universal travel standard which multiple countries will adopt with their own visa requirements on top of it. So something of that technology will become a reality which will go towards making the global Indian today an actual global financial citizen as well. So that if you have to open an account in India and transact in the UK, you can do it seamlessly and both the regulators know exactly what you're doing and you can do it in a safe and secure manner.

So that is the third thing that I see happening and in relation to that I think a lot more work is going to happen on reg tech and fraud tech because as technology has leapfrogged, a lot of people have tried to hack the system and we are all aware of the kinds of fraud that have happened. A lot of it is also to do with a lack of understanding and education. When something really grows this phenomenally, not everybody of the 500 million Indians who are using it are using it with full knowledge, things can get compromised. A lot of work will happen on closer transaction monitoring, anti-money laundering, close of fraud controls, sanctions, checks, universal blacklists and I think a lot of tech and machine learning is going to drive that. So that is the fourth area.

The fifth, I see AI and GenAI taking over at least 70% of the things that are being done right now. The way it is shaping up, that must be done responsibly by the industry. I see AI doing a lot of decisioning, whether it is credit underwriting decisions or even fraud advanced triggers, lead triggers etc. So that is the fifth trend I see.

Sixth, I actually see financial services somewhere going back to the basics as well because if you think about it, while we are all celebrating the success of UPI, there are 400 million Indians who have still not tried digital payments and there are reasons to that because a lot of the innovation has been smartphone-first. But to think of taking it to the world beyond smartphones, on feature phones, on devices like wearables. So, one aspect is that there are a lot of sections of society like this, whether it is the senior citizens or it is the differently abled. I think actual consciousness about building for them is the sixth thing that I think that is going to come in.

Pratik Shah: The government is also building a lot of the ancillary surrounds. Not only UPI, but now with the Agri Stack getting done, the land records getting digitized. I think a lot of that will feed in seamlessly.

Paroma Chatterjee: That is where I believe a lot of these pieces for the underbanked will change dramatically because these pieces will become big. If I can risk my neck and predict, then 10 years later, five years later, I do not think we'll be referring to it as digital payments anymore. It will be just payments.

Pratik Shah: I agree. I think this part; I am sure a lot of viewers will view it. I am in the same camp. We did a recent survey for GenZ across cities, across suburbans, urban city and so on. The way they have caught up to using digital and being digital first is not funny. I do not imagine that for a branch of the future, unless there is a differentiated experience, why would a customer walk in. Paroma, what you just said, I think a lot of financial services or the high street banks are also now wanting to learn from organizations like Revolut and how they are thinking and reorganizing themselves, unlike the traditional approach - not having this whole breakup between business, digital, technology as siloed function but really bringing groups of people working together as a pod solving problems. Obviously in a different environment, and it needs a different culture to build. But the tables might turn very significantly if we do not prepare for what is about to come.

What are you taking from India to Revolut, the ‘Made in India’ factor?

Paroma Chatterjee: The very fact that Revolut's first hub outside London is here, where we are employing close to 50% of Revolut's global population and we are not just building for India, our employees over here are working on building for the rest of the Asia-Pacific markets and the world and almost the entire transaction banking, the banking back end of our European operations is today run from here. Whether it is your onboarding of customers all the way to fraud investigations. I think that very fact, that we are proving that we can make in India for the world, is a case study that I am very very proud of and the fact that a global company like Revolut, which is the second-highest valued fintech globally acknowledges that and is investing further in, that is testament to that.

Pratik Shah: I can tell you that with 50% of the global headcount for any large financial services companies to be based out of India, you will be number one.

Paroma Chatterjee: I do not think there are two aspects to it. More than just the sheer headcount, the part that I am proud of is that it is the high-end jobs. These are the jobs that people across different countries, youngsters would aspire to have. That is the kind of jobs they are. It is not just the back end, it is not the old-world outsourcing as it was. And that is something that I am really really proud of having built and being able to showcase on a world stage. The second is the product that we are building using India's technology UPI. You wouldn't believe it when we had our co-founder come here and actually have a Nariyal pani (coconut water) on the road and pay using the UPI and see that soundbox actually talking about it, it opens the world's eyes to it.

They have also become advocates of taking UPI international because I think UPI is an amazing track that we have built. The entire trinity that we've built. The fact that there is global recognition of that. I am part of the submissions and the conversations that happen over there as part of the G20 submissions, and particularly the UK-India corridor conversations where these are being showcased. This is the second (example). It is a matter of pride to see a homegrown technology being taken up globally by your own company and then the rest of the world. The third aspect is Aadhaar. Revolut’s authentication historically has been on the way the rest of the world has done it, which has been passport selfie based. The fact that we have a biometric identity for a billion-plus people, which can be used to authenticate in a stronger fashion, that is another eye-opener that that we can export and say it is doable at a billion scale to have everybody have a biometric identity and that is a tighter authentication than anything else that can be.

Last but not the least, the cultural nuance. I think some of the things in working for a global team I realized that there is a marked difference in style of working in the western world and here in India. One of the basic things is that relationship matters. We spoke about the fact that EQ matters. When you're stuck on a problem, it is not just about looking at a screen and trying to solve it. It is about walking across the corridor or setting up an online conversation with somebody and sorting things out through conversations. That is another cultural thing that I am happy to gradually bring into the Revolute culture: talk and solve problems.

The only advice that I can maybe share from my own life and experiences is again taking on from the two things we touched upon. One is to not get emotional and attached to your job. A lot of us do it, I did so in the early years of my career as well - attached a lot of importance and my identity to what I do, the kind of job that I have, the place that I work. We take it very personally and then things like quarterly ratings and assessments and promotions. Promotions vis-a-vis a peer set that we benchmark ourselves against. The compensation that we are earning again usually compared to a set that we benchmark ourselves against. We take some of these things way too seriously and the biggest word of advice that I can share with the youngsters after more than two decades of experience and coming here is not to take any of them seriously. You need to work for the sheer joy of working. I have always chosen my assignments based on what excited me the most. Where you get joy. Where I get joy from doing it. Where I could see that I could do something with it or something creative or innovative with it and make a difference.

The second thing I would encourage people to have is a meaningful life outside of the professional work that they do. A lot of times, the work becomes all-consuming. We spend bulk of our hours during the weekdays on work. Even during weekends, we end up thinking about it because we are so passionately involved in it. But having something - whether it is writing or reading or playing a sport or playing a musical instrument or traveling. I think it is important to have something else in life going on.that is That is the balance.

Pratik Shah: What rejuvenates you?

Paroma Chatterjee: A few things, actually. One, I am an avid reader. Second, actually this has become more prominent now, spending time with my child because in this kind of a career you have to balance out time between the child that you love in the workplace and the child that you love at home. And the third is playing a sport. That is my idea of fitness. I do not go to a gym but I play. The fourth thing is painting. I've always had an affinity.

You have to have something. I was going to go down that path being a Bengali, there has to be something artistic, either poetry or painting.

The minutes that I spend in front of my canvas are my go-to, my escape if you will, my meditation, my therapy, my way of getting away from the uncertainties of life for those few minutes.

Pratik Shah: Given that you are a visitor from Mumbai coming to meet us in Bengaluru, I am going to bring in a bit of Bollywood through what we call ‘flash finesse’. It is our rapid fire. It is done in a playful manner to ask you a volley of questions. Tell me whatever first comes to your mind. If you weren't in finance, what career you would be in?

Paroma Chatterjee: I think going by what we spoke about, I'd probably be an artist. Painter. Today, I travel the world. My job takes me all around the world. I might have been going around the world displaying my work in galleries.

Pratik Shah: One word that describes your leadership style.

Paroma Chatterjee: I can't pick one. Can I pick three? Because I switch between leadership styles based on the situation. I think one of the things that stands out is coaching. Whenever I have raw talent that is yet untapped, I push my people to excel. The second is authoritative because when you have to set a vision and get an entire organization aligned behind it, you need to be authoritative. And the third is pace setting because I believe in excellence every single day. I alternate largely between these three leadership styles depending on the circumstance.

Pratik Shah: One advice you will give to younger Paroma, your younger self.

Paroma Chatterjee: Do not be in a hurry. Life is not a sprint. It is a marathon.

Pratik Shah: A myth about women in leadership that you would like to bust.

Paroma Chatterjee: The fact that we like being called women in leadership. We do not like being called ‘women in leadership’. We are leaders. We are leaders who are as competent if not more than our male counterparts and that is how we would love to be thought of. By giving us women awards, I do not think we appreciate it.

Pratik Shah: Are you into luxury or sustainable fashion or both?

Paroma Chatterjee: Look at me. What do you think? Sustainable fashion.

Pratik Shah: Street food or fine dining?

Paroma Chatterjee: Street food. I come from Kolkata, I still love the puchka and jhal mudi available on the street stalls in Kolkata, whenever I get to go there. You come from Mumbai, even Mumbai street food stands out.

Pratik Shah: But nothing beats Kolkata. Ask me. I am a big fan as well. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Paroma Chatterjee: I am a night owl.

Pratik Shah: Any leader that you wish to have a podcast with, or follow or have a coffee with or spend a day with. It could be anyone, not necessarily in financial services, anyone you admire.

Paroma Chatterjee: I would want to do one with Mithali Raj. I will tell you why. Because cricket is religion in India and it was completely male dominated. She is the first captain who brought women’s cricket onto the map, to the WPL that is today. I want to be able to sit across the board with cue cards in my hands and have a conversation with her to look inside her head. What did she go through and what her experiences were in an arena which every Indian looks at, to bring women’s cricket on the map.

Pratik Shah: I am sure Mithali Raj will get this video! This is lovely. Thank you so much for your time. As we wind up, given you have multiple interests – what will be that one thing – a song or poetry or movie that summarizes you.

Paroma Chatterjee: What summarizes me isRobert Frost’s poem “The Road not taken”.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Pratik Shah: Paroma, it has been lovely to meet you. Thank you for spending time with us. I am certain you will inspire a lot of young leaders who will want to travel the road less travelled.

Paroma Chatterjee: I hope that does happen. It has been an enjoyable conversation. Thanks, Pratik for having me here.

Episode 2: In this episode, Pralay Mondal, MD & CEO of CSB Bank, shares leadership lessons shaped by FMCG roots, his banking journey, and passion for simplicity. He emphasizes people, culture, and governance as core to building future-ready, values-driven financial institutions.

Intro: Welcome to the second episode of Leadership Unscripted. In this episode, Pratik Shah, Partner and National Leader Financial Services at EY India, hosts Pralay Mondal, MD and CEO of CSB Bank to learn about his journey from being in the FMCG sector to becoming an “accidental banker” and now a highly respected name in financial services. Pralay shares his views on the importance of early learnings and responsibilities as a leader, while also focusing on the transformative impact that customers of the future and technology will continue to have on banking.

Pratik Shah: Leadership. It is more than just a title. It is a journey shaped by decisions, fuelled by experiences, and defined by stories. And some of the most powerful stories are the ones you have not heard, just yet. The stories are real, the insights game changing, and the leaders, they are right here. I am excited. Welcome to Leadership Unscripted. Today we are honored to host Mr. Pralay Mondal, esteemed MD and CEO of CSB. He has a distinguished career, built across a range of institutions, from Colgate to Wipro, Axis and HDFC Bank. I have known him for many years. Mr. Mondal is a luminary in financial services. His contribution have been in terms of transforming retail banking in a range of organizations. Thank you, Mr. Mondal, for joining us. It's a big pleasure to have you here.

Pralay Mondal: Thank you for inviting me. Just one clarification: I am not young anymore but my mind is young so I hope I will be able to connect with the young.

Pratik Shah: Can you go back to the beginning of your journey and share some of the highlights in early life and the path that you have taken that made you the leader who you are today?

Pralay Mondal: You have introduced me as a banker, but in a way I am an accidental banker because when we were coming out of our management institutes, when we were giving the interviews, I used to pull my classmates’ leg at IIM-Calcutta, that you are going for Citibank, Grindlays and realized that those were the day one jobs in banking. We got interviewed in Colgate, Unilever. I got into Colgate, and I never thought that I will ever join banking but destiny.

I must say that I learned a lot in Colgate and in Wipro. It was a sunrise organization that time, and we saw the legendary (Azim) Premji from very close. We had the opportunity to see him because he used to interact with us every quarter and talk about his values and he had belief sessions with us, and they were amazing. I can tell you what we learned about distribution in Colgate-Palmolive is still probably 50 years ahead of where banking is today. I used to run the inter-rural distribution and we used to see how we will go to the next mile. I used to wonder that if I am driving 3 hours going and 3 hours coming back to just sell 10 sachets and few tooth powders, how will I get RoI? Much later I realized how these markets were built and that's where the larger revenue comes. Much later in life, when I started the ‘deep geo’ concept at HDFC, which has become very large now, I had initiated it along with some of our team members with the guidance of Aditya (Puri), of course. The whole germination of the thought came from Colgate, how we used grassroots distribution models to reach deep geographies and sell products. That is the same thing happened in banking. Much later, when I joined Axis, I also told Amitabh (Chaudhry) the same thing, let’s do a deep geo which will eventually play out. Unfortunately, I had a little shorter time in Axis and COVID-19 also came so we could not do what we wanted to do, but the thought was there.

Later, Mohnish came and made it Bharat Banking, which is doing very well. I must say that early learnings which we get in our life can be transformed and banking is traditional sales distribution customers. In a way a little behind the FMCG companies in terms of distribution, products, processes, marketing and all that stuff, but I think we are catching up. It is a very interesting journey.

Pratik Shah: Fantastic and interesting. It is interesting you mentioned about the experience of understanding and going deep into India and understanding the real Bharat. It gets you to think about what sort of distribution strategy will work as you expand banking deeper into the heartland, because metros are different and driving three hours is the patience you need to understand the heart of India. It is a very different learning and cannot be replicated.
Leaders often have small habits that set the tone of how they look at things. Do you have a simple ritual, personal or professional that helps you to stay energized throughout the day?

Pralay Mondal: I am very organized. Whether it is in the kitchen or office. If I open a bottle of oil, I will ensure that it is closed, and it is kept back in the right place because I do cook.

Pratik Shah: You love cooking?

Pralay Mondal: Yes. It is a way to de-stress for me. For you power lifting is de-stressing, for me it is cooking.

In my office, you will never see a single piece of paper. It has been the same for 30 years because I always try to keep things back where they were. And if something has to be done, I fundamentally believe that sitting on it for more than 5 minutes will not help because I will not think differently after 5 minutes. If at all, I will forget what is the context. My instruction to my team, to my executive assistant who has worked with me for the last 20 years is - come in, get the signature, get the decision and take the paper out. Do not keep anything here. Do not think. Just get going. Do not procrastinate. Just take a decision. Quick decisioning. I saw this in one of the bosses I really learnt a lot from, and I admire – Mr. Aditya Puri. You go to him, and you will not sit in front of him for more than 2 minutes for a decision. If I could do even 1/100th of that. You learn from people, and you know what is good to do. So

trying to do something good is always good. I practice all these things when I am at home and at office and everywhere and it is helping.

Pratik Shah: Fantastic, but I also learnt something today that you love cooking. Next time I am going to take you up on that. In this world of social media, where everyone is everywhere, you have a very limited social media presence which obviously creates that intrigue as well. But tell me more about what's your thought process on being or not being on the social media.

Pralay Mondal: Something I do not do, does not necessarily mean it is not important. That could be my personal choice because I may have other priorities in my life. I am not on any of the social media platforms other than WhatsApp. I don't think social media is bad, provided you use it productively. But what I see today is that a lot of the social media news and everything is coming to me in some form or the other, either my team is sending or something else is happening somewhere. I get a lot of things from you guys as well and thanks for that. Getting knowledge does not necessarily mean that you have to only get it from social media. But I also see the other part of social media and that is a lot of distraction. And time is at a premium. So, I think that from a knowledge gathering, for connecting with people it is very good, but if it is interfering in your personal life, then I'm not that type. So, to that extent I have managed without it.

Pratik Shah: This is a good message to a lot of younger leaders. To consume but consume selectively and responsibly.

You have been at the helm of various banking giants and have seen very varied landscapes as far as banking is concerned. There is always a thing around core values and purpose driven leadership. From your perspective, what is a set of core values that is non-negotiable, and have always been your driving force in any decision that you make.

Pralay Mondal: This is my favorite subject. I try to tell everybody I meet, including my children. There is a history to it. I learned it from my parents, and I think that is where a lot of us.

learnt in our upbringing. Coming to professional life, I learnt it from (Azim) Premji himself. I still remember he had these belief sessions and he would ensure he spent hours and hours with all the new joiners and middle level leaders. We used to sit through those sessions and listen to what he was saying. The amount of patience he used to have in explaining to everyone! In the end,he used to give a card, which had these beliefs written and we kept it in our pockets. People talk about communication. Communication is not English. Communication is how effectively you have been able to translate your vision to the last mile That's what I saw him doing at that level.

So, there are about four or five, I have imbibed to the best of my ability. I cannot do what he did. One is respect for people and other is ethics and integrity. These are larger subjects. Ethics and integrity are not being corrupt. Ethics and integrity mean how are you committed to the values of the organization, committed to the values of your society, to your family and all of that. It's a very large subject and probably we are

just learning. That I have tried to do. Of course, there are other values like customer orientation but these two I have tried to ensure. Respect for people is most important.

In the corporate world, you must take tough decisions, but tough decisions can be taken without disrespecting somebody and I make this statement to everybody and a very strong statement that nobody has the ability to disrespect you without your consent. I want to tell everybody who's listening that nobody can ever disrespect you without your consent. If someone is disrespecting you, you must have given them consent. Because you always have an option. These are the two values which I have imbibed.

When I was leaving Axis and joining CSB, which was a big decision because I was handling a large portfolio with a large balance sheet and in CSB we had to build it back. I saw in Fairfax the same values– integrity, ethics and respect for people. I said, that's it, I want to join here. I think that's how you grow, and you learn, build and practice it every day.

Pratik Shah: It such a deep thought, respect for people as you get successful and as you start building larger businesses. I think somewhere, a lot of the younger leaders need to listen to this because, that style of leadership builds a very different, long-term following, which you have. And I've always seen a lot of leaders, but somehow you are this magnet that pulls a lot of leaders from different parts who would want to work with you because of that style of leadership. It speaks volumes of your style of leadership as well.

Pralay Mondal: It is the environment you create. An environment where people participate. Of course, people join for many reasons but environment matters.

Pratik Shah: CSB has its own rich history, a very diverse history. It would be very useful to understand your vision in terms of how you think the next four or five years will be like.

Pralay Mondal: As you know, we changed our name to CSB Bank after Fairfax became a promoter in the bank in 2019. Very recently, we added a tag line that truly represents us. This tagline is, “Trusted Heritage Smart Future”. I can show it now on my card. What it means is that you have to respect what the bank is and the bank was. Because we are a 104-year-old bank and not too many institutions survive for 104 years in the whole world. At the same time, you cannot be constant. You must take it forward and participate in the larger ecosystem, because if you are not scaled up, if you are not meaningful, then you are not a part of the larger system. That's how we are building leadership, we are building distribution, we are building products. We are going through an absolutely fantastic transformational journey.

On the technology side I don't want to go too much micro into it. But it's just amazing what we are doing. In fact, our OEMs have said that not too many banks have tried so many things together. We do not have a choice because we have to do it and we have to do it fast. So, I think it has been very interesting so far and I am proud of the leadership team. They are all amazing guys. They work together as a team and finally it is not about individual talent. We will come together and do it together. Everybody has a passion to build this bank, and I think we have a bright future.

Pratik Shah: Oh absolutely, I can see that on the floor. The entire leadership team that sits on the floor. Going back to the environment that you have created, a whole bunch of young, excited leaders that you build together. There is a big, fantastic story ahead.

If you had to call out big four or five trends for 2030 from a banking industry standpoint, from a business perspective, from a technology perspective, what would be the big bets.

Pralay Mondal: Four or five pillars, which we have also said for our bank. If you have to create a Long-term story for the country, for the industry, for the bank, I believe these five pillars are very important. One is governance. The second one is human capital. The third one is technology. The fourth one is customer orientation and fifth is compliance. All are important. I keep saying that this will be with me, this will be beyond me in the organization and I am sure that this will be true for most of the financial industry as well because Compliance has become such a large subject, Governance has become such an important subject and it is not about a tick on the box exercise. How do you do in spirit is very important. What is coming from the top as a vision from the board, from the CEO's office is very important.

So, I think these are very important to build an institution and if I think India is destined to become a very big powerhouse in the world and to that extent, there is a significant growth story. I just want to give one message to the youngsters watching – it is not always just about making a quick buck. There is something beyond that. Money will come and go, family will come and go, but the contribution you make (will last long). Much later in life, when you look at the journey and what you did, you can say, I did this, I made a difference here. Look at it also as a journey and this industry will give you that opportunity. Unfortunately, I have not seen the kind of talent coming into banking what used to happen before 2000. Because obviously opportunities are huge today. People are going to multiple places, etc. Banking does not give you instant gratification, but you have a responsibility to do something for the country.

Pratik Shah: Very important point you have mentioned on responsibility because if you have to really achieve the vision of Viksit Bharat, the entire banking and the financial services industry will have a massive role to play and we need that talent in this industry to really shape the way. Also, I think the other important point you mentioned is these are all the pillars - one is not greater than other. If you really want to build a strong house, each of these pillars has to be equal and equally strong. Customer orientation without technology will not get solves and without Governance, a technology problem will not get solved. Very interesting lessons for a lot of folks to carry forward.

You mentioned about Viksit Bharat, and you mentioned a vision. If you had to pick one big trend that you think will redefine banking or transform banking in the next five years, whatwould that be?

Pralay Mondal: Transformation, of course, will always be technology because banking is becoming more of technology today because customers would expect everything on the go. And decision making has to be fast and informed. How do you have re-iterative processes and decision making? What we hear about AI/ML and all of these is nothing but reiteration 2000 million times of the same thing so that you get better at decision making. Quicker automated processing and all of that stuff. Customers of future will be impatient, they want the right decisions and everything at the lowest cost. Having said that, I must say that technology is a great leveller. Today, you are ahead. Tomorrow somebody will be ahead of you depending on different things. It is a race. It is not an option you have. You have to do it, but finally what will make a difference is the culture of an organization, culture of the industry. How you do it the right way and who is doing it. The people element will never go away. People remain important and hence we cannot say that AI/ML will replace people because the final distinction between A and B will be how do you deliver the last mile.

Pratik Shah: I really hope everyone pays a lot of attention to what you just said. I think while technology will be table stakes, but at the end of the day it is the culture that will make a differentiated organization and I think that is sometimes forgotten in the race. Thank you for bringing that up. You mentioned spending time with friends and some of the best recesses you do is with friends. Throughout these years you must have kept in touch with some of your old friends. Tell us about your old connections and how do you continue to be in touch or does the work life consume you? How do you spend time with your friends?

Pralay Mondal: It is always important to have connections with your friends whom you know for a long time. For me one friend is at home because my wife was my schoolmate. There is a friend at home. It starts from home. But when I look back, I made friends not only in school and colleges but very good friends at work. When I was in HDFC Bank and I was building the card business, the entire team would go together abroad with the families and with their children. The children are connected more than what we are connected. It is such a wonderful family. When people say work is family, this is a live example of that. So, it is not that making friends happens only in school. This is a message I want to give that if you create the right environment, you can be demanding with your team because we build the best card business which still is probably the best and these are the same set of people who built it and they are still friends.

Pratik Shah: What is amazing for me is to hear how seamless it has been. From work to building relationships to friendship. It goes back to your ethos of respecting people, creating that sort of an environment – work, family, friendship sort of transcends itself in a very natural manner which makes the whole surrounding a lot easier to work. This brings me to the end of our first segment. Let's go to our second segment. This is what we call the ‘flash finesse’. So, are you ready? One word that describes your leadership style?

Pralay Mondal: I think inclusive and decisive.

Pratik Shah: A leader you would love to have a coffee with, real or fictional, or whatever?

Pralay Mondal: I have seen him in action in my early days and I would love to get a chance to have a coffee (Azim) Premji with him again.

Pratik Shah: A mistake you are glad you made?

Pralay Mondal: Coming to banking was accidental for me but the way it has transformed, I feel more responsible today in terms of contributing more to what I can. Maybe I would have done better in the commercial sense if I was working in IT, Colgate or somewhere else. But I feel lot more satisfied with my contribution. I am happy.

Pratik Shah: If you have to describe your life in a hashtag or a tagline, what would that be?

Pralay Mondal: Keep it simple.

Pratik Shah: Your comfort food?

Pralay Mondal: I am a Bengali, so rice and fish curry.

Pratik Shah: The best advice you ever received.

Pralay Mondal: Try to be a good human and make a difference to somebody's life, because I have seen many times that a lot of leaders do not even know what difference they made to me. How you walk the talk, because when your teams are seeing you, you do not know who is seeing you, but they will follow you. If you do something wrong, they will follow you. If you do something good, they will follow you. So, we carry a lot of responsibility within our hands. That is something which I always remember.

Pratik Shah: Open door policy or schedule check-ins?

Pralay Mondal: I have never followed scheduled check-ins. Always open-door policy.

Pratik Shah: Early bird or late night?

Pralay Mondal: Oh, I have been late night from my college days. I used to sleep at 3 a.m. in my IIT days. So, I could never get up early in the morning.

Pratik Shah: Paperback or e-book?

Pralay Mondal: Actually, I don't read many books. That's a big negative, I have to improve on that. I don't read many books.

Pratik Shah: Are you a brand freak or into sustainable fashion?

Pralay Mondal: I keep it simple.

Pratik Shah: Street food or fine dining? I'm sure I know the answer.

Pralay Mondal: Street food. Being from Kolkata, street food is obvious.

Pratik Shah: Build a business or invest in startups?

Pralay Mondal: Build a business.

Pratik Shah: If you are to pick one movie dialog that really resonates with you, what would that be?

Pralay Mondal: Kal ho na ho. I think we must live in the present and build the future. We must make a difference for whomsoever we can because, which car you drove, which suit you wore, which house you stay, no one will remember, but if you make a difference in somebody’s life, whom you do not even know, that person will remember you forever. I believe in that. That is very important.

Pratik Shah: One song that always uplifts your mood.

Pralay Mondal: Humme tumse pyaar kitna, yeh hum nahi jaante, magar jee nahi sakte tumhare bina.

Pratik Shah: You are a romantic as well as a passionate human being. This song is from the movie Kudrat, and that is your kudrat/nature.

Thank you so much for giving us a glimpse of a very different side of you. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and I really appreciate you spending so much time with us. Thank you.

Pralay Mondal: Thank you, Pratik, I really enjoyed every part of this conversation and, of course, we will be in touch. Thank you.

Episode 1: Sudipta Roy, MD & CEO of L&T Finance, shares his leadership journey across industries, passion for photography, and insights on urban-rural lending, Gen Z banking, and AI-led transformation, highlighting how tech is redefining the delivery of timeless financial principles.

Pratik Shah, Partner and National Leader Financial Services, EY India in conversation with Sudipta Roy, Managing Director and CEO, L&T Finance.

Pratik Shah: Leadership. It is more than just a title. It is a journey shaped by decisions, fueled by experiences, and defined by stories. And some of the most powerful stories are the ones you have not heard, just yet. The stories are real, the insights game changing, and the leaders, they are right here. I am excited. Welcome to Leadership. Today, I am happy to host Mr. Sudipta Roy, MD & CEO L&T Finance. Welcome, Mr. Roy. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

Sudipta Roy: Thank you.

Pratik Shah: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to delve into what makes Sudipta tick. How do you start your day? Any habits that you have to start your day?

Sudipta Roy: The first thing that I do even before I get out of bed is to check how well I have slept last night. I sleep with my Apple watch and I track my sleep every day in the morning. That is the first thing that I do. Typically, I try to be in office between 8.45 a.m. to 9.00 a.m.. That is when the day starts. It is good to hit the office a little early because you catch up on your emails before other people come in. You get that 45-minute window to catch up and clear your emails and gather your thoughts for the meetings. Typically, my meetings on most days start from 9:00 a.m..

Pratik Shah: Do you sleep well?

Sudipta Roy: I really did not realize it earlier, but for about four or five years, I really struggled with sleep. I recommend everyone to read this book called ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker. He is probably one of the preeminent sleep scientists. We do not realize that sleep is the best form of exercise. I am now very careful about my sleep. I make sure that I get that six-and-a-half to seven hours, no matter.

Pratik Shah: I know that you spend a lot of time on your hobby, but I really want the viewers to know more about your passion towards wildlife photography. Since you are from IIT, I thought that was a young Farhan Qureshi of ‘3 Idiots’ in the making. Tell us about your passion.

Sudipta: It has been about 15 years now that I have been investing majority of my free time in learning the craft. Photography as a craft is extremely complex. It is a very complex science and wildlife photography as a genre is probably the most difficult genre of photography because your subject is not in your control. In one instance, in 2019, I sat for five hours in 40 degrees centigrade sun, from about 1:30 p.m. to about 6:30 p.m. five hours non-stop for one particular shot.

Pratik: Do you think you bring a lot of this to work? Patience, persistence.

Sudipta: Yes, some part of that comes to work. First is focus and persistence. When you are doing photography and when you are tracking, for example, a tiger, you are very focused on the task. And you probably will spend next two hours, even if the tiger is walking, standing there, waiting for it to move. It is burst of action, followed by long pauses. That teaches you patience, that teaches you to remain focused on the task despite the high test in between. In a way, a part of that comes to work where we are, very, very focused on what we do. But at the end of the day, we also must be patient. Sometimes good things take time. I will give you a small example. We started building our new software in-house. We call it Cyclops. It is a new three-dimensional credit engine. Probably one of its kind in the country now. I gave the team about four months to build and the team actually built it in four months, but the scaling up took a lot of time.

Pratik: I think a lot of younger folks need to listen to this about being patient.

Sudipta: You have to be patient. Patience is one of the big unsung virtues of leadership. Results are not instant coffee. Organization transformation is not instant coffee. People development does not happen overnight. It is a gradual slow process. So, leaders have to be patient (while) still keeping focus on the end result.

Pratik If you walk back through your journey, between Citi and Deutsche Bank, you spent 10 to 12-plus years at ICICI. If you reflect back on this journey and where you are today, what couple of incidents or learnings that make you who you are today?

Sudipta: I started my career with FMCG. FMCG rips away your ego. And I will give you a story. I was in Colgate and about five or six days into the company, I was sent after the initial session, to then Calcutta from where I was promptly dispatched to Siliguri, where I went with the salesman trying to go shop to shop, trying to sell toothpaste. There was one middle-aged gentleman who was sitting in the shop, obviously Bengali. He asked me, in Bengali, that you look like a person from a respectable family. What are you doing selling toothpaste?

Pratik: Tell us in Bengali.

Sudipta: I said, yes, I am from a respectable family. And then he said, what have you studied? I said I have studied Chemical Engineering in IIT Kharagpur and then went on to do my MBA from XLRI. The man was stunned. So, what any FMCG stint does is actually chip away all your ego. And it teaches you a lot of discipline also. Initial grounding was very hard. And I was transferred from Siliguri to Guwahati. And Guwahati was a disturbed area. It was again a great experience working there.

From Colgate, in 2000, I shifted to Citi cards. I stayed in Citi for almost six years, six-and-a-half years. Citi was a great learning ground because what it did was that it gave you a lot of freedom to do things and, you know, sort of fail and break. And so that is where I learned the ropes of banking and then came to Deutsche Bank. I always say that if Citi taught me, the initial ropes of banking and how to do distribution, etc., Deutsche Bank taught me compliance, control, structure, processes. They have a German way of working. While in Deutsche Bank, I started managing parts of the business in India and China. It started giving me a cross-culture view. I had to manage a team in India and manage a team in China. The leadership style in China is completely different from the leadership style in India. Here, you have the ‘argumentative Indian’. In China, you have the compliant execution-focused Chinese. You have to really switch your management style. And that is why, it is also very important that there is no one single management style. Every situation demands a different management style.

At the end of the global financial crisis, Deutsche decided to play down their retail asset portfolio in the country. So, I landed in ICICI Bank in 2010. In Citi, I was a part of a well-run business. In Deutsche Bank, I set up the business from scratch, so amazing learning. When I joined, ICICI Bank post-2010 was in a need of a rebuild. And trust me, it's easy to work in a well-run business. It is relatively easier to start a business from scratch. But to fix a business that has gone through some trouble is the toughest of all. The 12 years I spent in ICICI bank was a learning scale. ICICI Bank teaches you scale. Overall, I would say each of the organizations that I worked in - Colgate, Citi, ICICI, big names in themselves - each of them has played a very formative part in my leadership journey, and I am grateful to all of them.

Pratik: I am sure. And as they say, crisis creates leaders. Being part of some of these crises, building businesses, changing from where you were in ICICI, it just allows you to think. You have seen a lot. What more can happen, what bad can happen. You sort of build from there. From that journey to now, really lending to the real Bharat is again a very interesting pivot that you are making. And I am very excited because again, I believe if we fast forward the next five years, growth is in the real part that we are lending to. Tell us about how you are thinking about lending to the Bharat of our times.

Sudipta: At L&T Finance as an organization, we have that unique sort of asset profile where we are 50% rural, 50% urban. Though in my previous jobs I have mostly managed urban portfolios, and this is probably the first time handling (at) scale rural portfolios. But you know, at the bottom, fundamentals of lending remain the same. The customer is a little different. We are one of the largest in microfinance in the country. After coming to L&T Finance, I have had the chance of traveling extensively in rural India. And when you travel in rural India, there are two things that hit you very starkly. South India is probably 10 years ahead of Northeast India. What we are trying to do is that we have a lot of customers who are women. And most of these women customers, especially on the microfinance side, have been making a journey with us. They probably started small with INR35,000 loan and then repaid and then took another loan and are now probably in the fourth cycle. Many of them do smalls businesses. They may have some kirana shops somewhere, some animal husbandry, and maybe a vegetable shop somewhere, etc. We have seen some of those women grow along with us. What we are trying to do right now is launch products that are probably a little high in ticket size and help them in their particular growth journey as well.

It is very important to note that you also have to be a very, very responsible lender in rural areas. Because rural areas in by nature are very credit hungry. Given a credit tab, if you turn on the tab very fast, leverage builds fast, clearly because a large proportion of them are sophisticated borrowers. And given the fact that there is always a little bit gap between what is needed and what is available in rural areas, there is always that gap of liquidity, which they are trying to plug through borrowing.

It is also very important for us to be a responsible lender. What we are trying to do is now bring products and services which give them that required liquidity push or that liquidity in their hands, while on the other hand, balancing the risk reward equation. Just to make sure that they are not getting indebted too much. That is what we are trying to do. And if you see our performance, especially in the last year, when the microfinance industry went through a little bit of an asset quality show, our performance has been head and shoulders ahead of all others. So, for us, the mantra for rural lending is give what they want, and at the right time without leveraging the customer.

Pratik: Sudipta, if you leverage four, five years ahead, and if you look at India of 2030, on one hand, obviously the country will grow with the growth in GDP, etc. The population that will come in terms of borrowing financial services will be the Gen Zs of today. How will your organization evolve to cater to the Gen Zs and how differently will India borrow in the next four or five years?

Sudipta: Majority of the borrowing is becoming digital. I remember when I started my retail financial services journey, a large amount of the origination used to be through the direct sales channel. That channel is still relevant today, but the fact is that a large amount of the borrowing has moved online. A large of the amount of the borrowing has moved on demand. I believe that, as the Gen Z comes up, a couple of lending/ asset classes will probably have more salience than others. In cards and payments, we are at 80-85 million cards today. Probably we will get to about a 100 million very soon. But the Gen Z wants to make sure that that at least while they are paying, they maximize their payment and earn rewards. I see a lot of Gen Z customers focused on what rewards that they get. They want their money to work much, much harder, or even when they borrow, thar try to squeeze the last juice out of that borrowing equation. They are very astute about what rates are available in the market. Because thanks to the FinTech revolution, information is much more freely available. And they are more likely to go and seek a loan.

One of the interesting features about Gen Z or Gen Alpha is that as they will come in, they trust tech platforms equally as they trust the brick-and-mortar banks. For them, going to Google Pay or going to CRED or PhonePe and taking a loan is similar to going in to a full stack bank or an NBFC. They are more likely to seek a loan digitally. And last but not the least, they are more likely to seek service instantly. For a generation built on Swiggy and Zomato, where you are seeing your delivery coming and you are used to tracking it, for a Gen Z to log a service request and being told that it will take four days for the financial services institution to come back, they just cannot fathom it. Someone should give me minute by minute update.

Pratik: The Amazon experience, I need the Amazon experience.

Sudipta: Yes, they want the same e-commerce, quick commerce experience in financial services.

Pratik: That is true. And that is where most of the financial services organizations, though movement has been made, still have miles to reach.

Sudipta: I agree. In fact, in my organization when I asked, what is that we commit to our customers? In how many days we will get back? I am not telling that it was mortifying. They said, we will take X days to get back. I said, what's that? So progressively we have been bringing it down. But the fact is that Gen Z expects that. I log in and my problem should be solved in the next 15 minutes. I applied for a loan; I should get the loan response within the next 15 minutes. They want the same experience. And that is where financial services have to move to.

Pratik: You are right. And this comes time and again, and like you said, customer experience, customer services, are the stakes. At this stage, everything will revolve around it. If I ask a provocative question, do you think the tables might change for organizations that don't really focus on these parts?

Sudipta: Absolutely. Large organizations? Absolutely. I will tell you a line which I said in a townhall. We completed 30 years this year. I normally speak extempore. But this is the first time I wrote down my speech because I wanted to be very, very clear in what I say, and I also wanted to be very focused on what I say. And I said clearly that in the next decade, a lot of the existing winners will fall by the wayside and a lot of new winners will be created in 10 to 15 years, because they are again at an infection point. And given the fact that AI is moving at such a fast pace.

I am sure you are following the trends of transforming your image to Studio Ghibli style image has just like spread like wildfire. Yes, the AI world is moving very fast and the speed of adoption is very fast. Organizations that do not understand this and organizations that do not change fast enough to use applicative AI in all their lines of work will fall behind. And as I said, a new set of winners will be created.

Pratik: I am glad you are saying this because I am hoping a lot of our Gen Z viewers understand that financial services is moving in that direction. Because what bothers me sometimes with a lot of the younger folks is that, when we were starting our careers, the top talent used to go to financial services. And now, all of a sudden, that top talent is sort of distributed between financial services and e-commerce companies. And I think leaders like yourself are paving the way of how financial services are transforming themselves using tech and AI. That is where the top talent needs to be. So, I will take the cue from that. I know you are a big proponent of tech and AI. You gave me a glimpse of what you did in Cyclops. Just fast forward next three, four years. How do you think AI will transform financial services more specifically?

Sudipta: Finance will consume an incredible amount of engineering. The products and services that the financial services firms will bring to their customers will have a solid bedrock of engineering, built on the latest tools. If you see in Cyclops, it is more of machine learning and less of AI. If you look at Cyclops, which is our machine learning based three-dimensional credit engine. If you look at some of the tools that you are using in AI, for example, in microfinance auto attendance using face match. Using a deep learning algorithm. I do believe that most organizations will have three buckets in which AI will be used. First thing is in onboarding, how you can onboard in a far more foolproof fashion. In fact, for example, one of the problems that we face in two-wheeler business, which is a very large business for us, is that there are a lot of customers who come, they are not the end user of the bike. They are just lending their credit profile for someone else to pair up the bike. Now what we are doing is that we are using very advanced machine learning to build an algorithm instantly… we call the algorithm the Shikhandi algorithm. That means, putting someone in the front, to identify mules. And we are able to do that now to a 94% certainty level. Fantastic, right? This is a very good outcome of using technology to solve a problem on the ground in terms of micro loans against property.

We are using Gen AI based tools to grade the quality of a dwelling. It goes and checks whether you know it has got exposed wiring or not. Is it a pukka house? Or a Kutcha house? Is it painted or non-painted. The interior photograph is able to decode and come up with the standard of living index. Which goes as a feed into the credit algorithm.

I believe that, in origination you can use, in portfolio management, you can use, in customer service, you can use. And you can use in overall interaction layer with the customer. It is in every sphere that you can use.

The way your data systems are structured, it requires a lot of streaming data flow as well. So, how they are structured and how you are able to manage the latency during all these processes to deliver a seamless user experience will define the winners and the losers from tomorrow. The bedrock principles of financial services will still remain the same. But the delivery mechanism will become completely, technology driven, seamless, invisible.

Pratik: And you know, I call it the Agentic mesh because all these agents that you are building will automatically over a period start becoming experts. So, you are building various chefs in the kitchen. One chef is very good at frying, other chef is very good at cutting. And then you are building this data layer, which is like a mesh. And the journey will move in such a seamless manner from product exploration to onboarding, to underwriting, to servicing.

Sudipta You almost see AI architecting that entire journey in a very successful way. I will give you a good example. Our first agent, we call it KAI - Knowledgeable AI. We build it for our mortgage business because we feel that normal chatbots are very generic. We go there, they will regurgitate some templated answers. In 30 seconds, you feel bored. KAI can meaningfully interact with you. It is able to do bilingual, from English or Hinglish you convert to English, it is able to pick up English. And if you say, I want to borrow so and so and I want to repay X amount, then what will be my EMI, or give simulation for my EMI, it instantly gives it. It does it on the fly. What has happened is that among people who came and used KAI to get some of their questions answered, invariably ended up applying for a loan at our end. So, it has turbocharged our lead generation from digital platforms.

Pratik: This is a sign of times to come. But this is fantastic what you are already doing. If I had to ask you that, if there was a leader or a person that you would want to follow for a week or a mirror or watch, who would that be and why?

Sudipta: I really admire Elon Musk. I have been following him for the last six to eight years. If you go to YouTube and this three-part series of “Everyday Astronaut”, where Elon takes the guy who runs this channel ‘Everyday Astronaut’, through the Touro service in Texas. And talks about his philosophy of building SpaceX. Whatever money he made from the sale of PayPal or whatever money he got from PayPal, he put a part in Tesla. He put a part in SpaceX. In SpaceX, he was one launch away. There is a very iconic photo. I don't know whether you have seen that photo. They launched off an island, and the entire rocket crashed. To do the analysis as to why it crashed, he assembled the parts of the rocket in a shed and Musk, sitting on his haunches, he is looking at the parts of the rockets. And this is when you are inches away from bankruptcy. Literally. And from there to the concept of rapid reusability. And now the nerd in me will come out, you will see how the Raptor engine has gone through its iterations and how it has become simpler over time. How the Merlin engines progressed. And how they have iterated the design of the Star Ship, to chopsticks catching the spaceship. See, when he first said four years back that we will have a chopstick catch the Starship, everybody said, this is nonsense. But the fact is that they have done it. He did. In that ‘Everyday Astronaut’ three-part series, he tells his management philosophies. I trade fast, fail fast, cut your losses, and move on. And, and there are several of them.

At the end of the day, he is a person who works 24/7. The story is that he used to sleep beneath the table in the Telsa factory when they were having troubles in scaling production. He slept for one year beneath his office table. Either he used to sleep on the roof or sleep under the table. Which also means that, and this is my definition of who a Chief Executive Officer or CEO is. I say that that day of a Chief Executive Officer, who is like a mythical being, sitting in a corner like a fairytale, comes and shows his face at times when the window opens… those days are over. The CEO is defined now as Chief Execution Officer. And Musk is who embodies Chief Execution Officer. If you have to build Tesla, if you have to build SpaceX, if you have to build Neuralink, if you have to build Starlink, excellence does not come like this, you know. (Thomas) Edison bol ke gaya hai, 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Quit compromise.

Pratik: What is your advice to some of the younger folks?

Sudipta: Slowly practice the art of detachment. Previously, I used to carry work home. Be focused, but do not be consumed. You know, our ancestors told us long time back, karam karo, phal ki chinta mat karo. 48 carat gold philosophy. If you are detached, you do not have that much of stress.

Last thing is go out of your office and switch off. Have a very strong hobby or a personal pursuit. I have a very strong hobby and a personal pursuit. I can come out of a very gruelling board meeting where things might have gone sideways. I will go home, I will open my computer, I will open my photography editing tool and I am completely switched off.

Pratik: I am going to our second segment now. I can actually go on and on but the second segment is ‘Flash Finesse’. It is about questions and answers in a flash. Our take on the rapid fire. Give us whatever answers come to your mind.

Pratik: One word that sort of describes your leadership style.

Sudipta: I would say, enabling.

Pratik: One habit you swear by to pick your productivity?

Sudipta: Discipline

Pratik: A mistake you are glad you made?

Sudipta: I originally thought leaving FMCG would be a mistake. But it was probably the best thing.

Pratik: Paperback or ebook?

Sudipta: Paperback. The feel of having a physical book in the hand. Nothing can beat it.

Pratik: Hills or beaches?

Sudipta: Hills. Though I like beaches as well. But you know, given a preference, hills.

Pratik: Street food or fine dining?

Sudipta: Actually, both. Both of them have their nuances.

Pratik: You cook?

Sudipta: I cook a bit.

Pratik: It is good therapy.

Sudipta: Yes, it is good therapy.

Pratik: AI-driven decisions or human expertise?

Sudipta: Horses for courses. Difficult, nuanced, moral dilemma handling - human expertise. Rote, brute force, processing and decision making – AI that does not have a moral overhand.

Pratik: Big picture or the fine details?

Sudipta: Actually, both. You need to see the big picture, but you should have the capability to zoom in when needed. So actually, both.

Pratik: Do you get time for friends, over the weekends?

Sudipta: Yes. I have a very strong friend network. And this is very important. Everyone that you meet in your life, barring your family and friends, have probably some sort of agenda. It is only your friends that give you free unfiltered feedback. They don't care. If you really want to know what is going wrong, if you really want to know what you are doing wrong, if you really want good advice without any agenda, it is friends. And we have a ritual now, about eight or 10 of our school friends meet for four days every year. Some of your old friendships actually keep you much more grounded and give you touch with the past. At the end of the day, when you are with friends, you are not looking over your shoulders.

Pratik: Absolutely lovely to know you, Sudipta. On a parting note, whatever you please, your life in a hashtag or as a movie title or a song, whatever that inspires you.

Sudipta: Tough one, again. So, hashtag would be #CreativeEnergy.

Pratik: You are creative and have lots of energy for sure. Thank you so much for spending time with us. It was lovely to know about the various facets of your life and I am sure the viewers will enjoy this a lot more. Thank you again and thank you for hosting us at your lovely facility.

Sudipta: Thank you.

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Disclaimer:

The transcripts were generated using automatic speech recognition and errors may occur. Please review for accuracy.
The views and opinions expressed by the guests and hosts are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of EY.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.

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Leadership Unscripted | Conversations with pioneers in Financial Services

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