Can Sanjiv Bajaj make Bajaj Finserv India's Best Fintech Company?

As e-commerce and fintech firms snap at their heels, Bajaj Finserv and Bajaj Finance are working to up their digital play in the consumer finance business.

- T. Surendar

IT’S UNUSUALLY PLEASANT FOR A May morning in Viman Nagar, a Pune suburb that adjoins the forested and tony Koregaon Park. A cool breeze is blowing across the terrace of the six-storeyed headquarters of Bajaj Finance, India’s most valuable lending company, just days after temperatures touched 42 degrees Celsius and the Deccan Plateau on which the city sits seemed to be radiating heat waves.

But come rain or sunshine, Rajeev Jain, managing director of Bajaj Finance, is at his desk at 7.30 a.m. every day. As we get ready for a meeting, Jain has a long day ahead. He has a visa interview and several review meetings as he prepares the final report for the previous financial year that will be discussed at a board meeting. Jain should have nothing to worry about. In the 11 years he has steered the company, revenues have grown from 503 crore to 13,466 crore in March 2018, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39%, and profits have jumped from 21 crore to 2,647 crore. In these years, Bajaj Finance’s market capitalisation has shot up from 900 crore to 1,10,000 crore, making it the Bajaj group’s most valuable company. And in the last quarter of FY19, its profits jumped 57% to 1,176 crore from the same period last year. Investors seem to love the story. In the aftermath of the carnage after a large non-banking finance company (NBFC), IL&FS, defaulted on its borrowings, Bajaj Finance was one of few stocks to recover lost ground. Its stock price rose to 3,131 in early May after losing a third of its value when it fell to 1,974 in October 2018.