India’s Product-AI Leap: How Finance Is Being Reimagined?

7 November, 2025

This article originally appeared in Forbes India Magazine.

AI is no longer the future of finance – it is the present, redefining how institutions build trust, manage risk, and deliver customer value. With India’s innovation ecosystem accelerating, the nation stands poised to lead the next phase of intelligent financial transformation.

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When I began my journey in technology, India was recognized for its services capability-coding excellence, offshore delivery, and custom projects. Yet I always believed we could aim higher: to build intellectual property, create platforms, and define global benchmarks. That ambition is now taking shape. Indian product firms are no longer just powering the world’s demand-they are building AI-driven platforms trusted globally.

The Turning Point: Scale and Sophistication

Fintech in India has evolved beyond mobile payments and wallets. Two key shifts have redefined its trajectory:

1. Scale and Expectation: India’s fintech adoption rate of 87% (EY Fintech Adoption Index, 2019) created massive demand for speed, security, and transparency. This scale has forced continuous innovation.
2. Complexity as Capability: Diverse regulations, rural–urban divides, and customer diversity have made Indian firms experts in building flexible, ethical, and resilient systems-capable of scaling globally.

Behind the Metrics: Building Global Banking Platforms

Building a product company isn’t about growth alone-it’s about consistent excellence across markets. At Nucleus Software, this principle defines our journey.

• Global Reach: Trusted by 200+ banks and financial institutions across 50+ countries, our platforms power lending and transaction banking worldwide.
• Scale and Reliability: Our transaction banking platform processes over 26 million transactions daily, while our lending systems manage portfolios exceeding USD 1.2 trillion.
• User-Driven Innovation: 500,000+ professionals use our platforms every day. Each interaction refines our design, embedding security, resilience, and user experience at the core.
• Digital Services Edge: Our digital services arm supports banks through cloud transformation, AI enablement, and cybersecurity – combining robust products with deep domain partnerships.

At Nucleus Software, our vision is clear-to make financial services access easy and enriching worldwide. The products we build today must continue to earn customer trust a decade from now.

AI: From Hype to Embedded Utility

AI has moved from concept to capability-driving smarter, faster, and fairer decision-making across financial ecosystems.

• Credit Decisioning & Risk: Machine learning accelerates approvals, predicts defaults, and strengthens risk governance.
• Document & Identity Intelligence: AI enhances fraud detection, OCR accuracy, and onboarding experiences.
• Predictive Analytics: Data models improve delinquency forecasting, cash flow predictions, and portfolio health monitoring.
• Responsible AI: Governance frameworks ensure bias detection, transparency, and compliance with data privacy norms.

What India Must Do to Lead?

For India to cement its position as a global AI–finance leader, a few levers are essential:

• R&D Investment: India invests less than 0.8% of GDP in R&D (World Bank 2023). Increasing this will enable stronger IP creation and AI research.
• Talent Retention: Cultivating innovation-led culture will help retain top AI, cybersecurity, and fintech talent.
• Regulatory Clarity: Transparent frameworks around AI fairness, explainability, and consent will build global credibility.
• Global Benchmarking: Indian fintech products must match global standards in reliability and user experience to scale sustainably.

The $600 Billion Opportunity

With a vast domestic market, strong engineering base, and rising regulatory maturity, India has a unique opportunity. NITI Aayog estimates that accelerated AI adoption could add USD 500–600 billion to India’s GDP by 2035-with financial services at the forefront. This is not just economic growth; it’s a structural transformation, enabling India to export digital trust and innovation globally.

Conclusion: Building Products That Outlast the Buzz

After decades in fintech, I believe true innovation lies not in riding the AI wave, but in anchoring it-with trust, ethics, and domain depth. India can export not just software, but integrity, not just platforms, but promise.

At Nucleus Software, our vision is clear-to make financial services access easy and enriching worldwide. The products we build today must continue to earn customer trust a decade from now. That is the real measure of innovation-and India’s product-AI leap will define it.

 
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