Bajaj Finserv lines up Rs 2,000 crore for AI, cybersecurity and quantum technologies

Bajaj Finserv would join hands with multiple academic institutions, invest in startups and build a 40-strong inhouse team as part of a new initiative called Finserv Intelligence to build highly scalable technology solutions in India for the world, Chairman Sanjiv Bajaj told ET in an exclusive interview.

The holding company for financial services in the Bajaj Group will invest Rs 1,500-2,000 crore over a five-year period to build scalability in AI, cybersecurity, quantum technologies etc, Bajaj Finserv said Thursday.

The investment program will prioritize early-stage companies, from seed to Series B, with strong scalability potential across AI, cybersecurity, quantum technologies, fintech, and consumer technology platforms, the company said.


Bajaj said the new Finserv Intelligence initiative aims to leverage both the foundational digital public infrastructure and AI capabilities in India to create a set of high technology, scalable, secure and low cost solutions for India and the world.

"In the last 15 years, as we have built our own research and the application focus has been with a three to five year time frame...What we have realized is that given the advent of how the digital world has grown in the last couple of years with AI, it was timely for us to look at a five to ten year window as well,” Bajaj said. “Medium-term research is what we will do through this initiative because we think that it is very important to build transformational capabilities in the medium-term."

Work on new initiatives has started for the last six months.

The first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IIT Bombay will research in retail experiences besides AI, cyber security and quantum technologies. Bajaj said the company will partner with more institutes in India and abroad.

The company is already hiring PhDs to build an in-house team for this new initiative.

"We have people coming on board in the next one or two months. Over the next year, we will have a team, some full-time and some part-time, about 40 people to start. They will start working with IIT Bombay. But they will also build out the other academia partnerships," Bajaj said.

Bajaj Finserv has been using AI in connecting with customers in common languages like English and Hindi for the last year or so. Bajaj said doubling down on this innovation now will help the company deepen its footprint.

"India has so many languages and then so many dialects. To make sure that we achieve our ambition to be present from one in three Indian households to every household. If you are looking at Bhojpuri or if you are looking at a dialect of Tamil, the world is not working on that. To get to language 20, 30, to get to dialect 70, dialect 80, that will be taken up as a medium term project by this initiative," Bajaj said.

The company has already identified a set of projects to work on with IIT Bombay which will be scaled up based on the experience.

Bajaj said the company expects to offer these products to other companies also with likely a new revenue stream in the long term.

The initiative envisages research & development (R&D) labs, centres of excellence, venture-led models and scholars-in -residence programmes for capability building.

Bajaj Finserv cited a recent Niti Aayog report which said that India's publicly funded gross R&D expenditure has remained stagnant at 60% compared to 70% for advanced economies. Finserv Intelligence is designed as a direct private-sector response to bridge the gaps between
research and application, anchoring patient capital in India’s deep-tech ambitions and creating a deployment ground at national scale.