Fintechs looking to AI to unlock opportunities, cost efficiencies

Expanding into adjacent business segments, unlocking new revenue streams and improving operating efficiencies through artificial intelligence are emerging as the next big growth drivers for India’s listed fintech firms.

After closing fiscal 2026 with steady revenue growth and profitability, fintech majors Groww, Paytm and PB Fintech are now sharpening their focus on improving operating leverage while building newer businesses around wealth management, distribution and AI-led services.

One 97 Communications, which runs Paytm, is focusing on marketing services and wealth broking businesses. The company identified wealth management and stock broking as the potential third pillar of growth after payments and lending.

New business areas are increasingly being built through AI-powered services, the company said. It disclosed that its software, cloud and data centre expenses rose 21% year-on-year to Rs 175 crore in March 2026 from Rs 142 crore a year earlier. Payment volumes on the platform have grown faster despite significant investments in AI.

Paytm is leveraging AI to build solutions for small businesses, including fraud detection, smoother customer onboarding and intelligence around payment trends for merchants.

“On an agentic workflow, the conversion improved seven to eight times over a human workflow, which is usually around 2% to 3%,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, Paytm, at an analyst call after the March quarter results.

Paytm closed FY26 with total revenue of Rs 8,437 crore, up 22% year-on-year, and a net profit of Rs 552 crore, marking its first full-year profit.

For Gurugram-based PB Fintech, AI is increasingly being deployed across customer relationships, advisory services and advanced data analytics, the company said.

From chatbots to product recommendations, AI is being used across multiple aspects of the business, disclosures in its press release showed. PB Fintech’s operating revenue for FY26 stood at Rs 7,166.4 crore, up 33% from Rs 5,385 crore a year earlier. Its net profit jumped 90% to Rs 670 crore in FY26 from the year ago.

Addressing queries around cost improvements through AI, Sarbvir Singh, group joint chief executive officer, PB Fintech, said the company was prioritising service enhancement over cost optimisation.

“AI for us is beyond customer service. The entire company is focused on this technology and we can see productivity going up,” Singh said during an analyst call last week.

AI is also being used in underwriting customers and detecting the probability of high claims, helping improve overall service delivery. Alongside improvements in its core financials, PB Pay, the payment aggregator business, stock broking, fixed income investments through corporate bonds, and distribution of pension products are emerging as the company’s next growth bets.

Wealthtech major Groww, which reported strong profitability over the past couple of years, is also betting heavily on the broader personalised wealth management space, where it aims to build products for different customer segments. Groww acquired Fisdom, through which it has built a business around bank-led distribution of wealth products. It is also building W, the wealth management platform for HNI investors, and Prime for mass-affluent customers.

Groww’s operating revenue rose 19% to Rs 4,644 crore in FY26, while its net profit hit Rs 2,083 crore, up 14%.

“We feel like this year we will see the inflection point in how AI will start impacting a lot of things. One is how we can improve the customer experience leveraging AI, and second is on the productivity side, where our internal teams are kind of shipping new products much faster and better,” said Lalit Keshre, chief executive officer, Groww, while announcing the FY26 financial results.

Groww also pointed out that, given its investments in AI and new business domains such as wealth management, its cost to serve existing customers could rise in the coming months.