Piramal Finance, a subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises, on Thursday announced the opening of their ‘Piramal Innovation Lab’ at Bengaluru. The Piramal Group company, one of the leading housing finance company, has opened the new centre to support unique innovations in digital and retail lending to meet the needs of a growing ‘Bharat’, it said in a release.
The company plans to hire over 300 professionals for various tech and business intelligence roles by the end of the current financial year for the new facility. “By the end of FY23, Piramal Finance aims to have a team of over 300 professionals at the Piramal Innovation Lab in Bengaluru for various tech and business intelligence positions, and will complement the existing large pool of professionals led by Saurabh Mittal (Chief Technology Officer) and Markandey Upadhyay (Head of the Business Intelligence Unit) across Mumbai and Bengaluru,” the company said.
As per the release, the new centre will complement and support Piramal Group's commitment to innovation and growth. The 'Piramal Innovation Lab' is an extension of Piramal Finance's goal to create innovative products, which meet the various finance requirements in the under-served and unserved 'Bharat' market, it said.
The company plans to attract talent for roles across software engineering, product management, user experience (UX) and data sciences from the thriving tech industry and the best engineering and management colleges across India. In line with a flexible, modern way of working, Piramal Finance also offers a hybrid work model for certain roles in the tech and business intelligence functions.
As per the company, Bengaluru was the preferred choice for the ‘Innovation Lab’, as the city has established itself as a vibrant ecosystem for technology with a solid digital infrastructure that attracts tech talent from across the country. The thriving start-up culture in Bengaluru provides well for driving disruptive innovation to improve customer offerings, it added.
Piramal Innovation Lab also plans to host regular Hackathons, which will provide a competitive setting in which engineers from all across India may use leading-edge technologies to solve hard customer problems.
Speaking on the occasion, Jairam Sridharan, MD, Piramal Capital & Housing Finance said, “Piramal Finance is rapidly expanding its footprint in Tier II and III cities of Bharat and the innovation centre in Bengaluru is a significant element of our growth strategy. The financial services industry is rapidly evolving, and this initiative will accelerate the development of next-generation lending solutions and analytics that align with how consumers are reimagining the industry. Nurturing innovation is a part of our core ethos, and the center will help us to create a vibrant ecosystem of fintechs, startups and tech innovators.”
Piramal Finance has 343 branches and plans to expand to 500-600 branches throughout Bharat markets in 5 years. Digital Embedded Finance, established in 2020, is a business unit of Piramal Finance. Since its inception, the embedded finance business has launched over 24 programs in partnership with leading digital consumers and merchant engagement platforms. With the activation of numerous branches, lending partnerships, and customer acquisition, the company's retail loan disbursements surged 62% quarter-on-quarter to ₹3,973 crore in Q2 FY23.
