Bajaj Finance Limited is an Indian deposit taking non-banking financial company headquartered in Pune. It was incorporated in 1987 as Bajaj Auto Finance Limited to finance the group's two and three wheeler sales, and grew into the country's biggest lender outside the banking system. It is a subsidiary of Bajaj Finserv, which holds about 52.49 per cent of its shares.
Last edited 16 October 20262 revisions16 sourcesReading time 23 min
Timeline
1987The company is incorporated on 25 March as Bajaj Auto Finance Limited, a non banking financial company set up to finance the group's two and three wheeler sales.the original business was dealer and vehicle finance
1998After eleven years in the auto finance market the company makes its initial public offer of equity shares and lists on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange.
2000The company moves into consumer durables finance and begins offering small ticket loans as the auto book matures.
2002Business loans and property loans are added, widening the company from a vehicle lender into a general retail financier.
2007The manufacturing operations and the financial operations are separated, and the split creates Bajaj Finserv as the holding company for the finance businesses.
2010The registered name changes from Bajaj Auto Finance Limited to Bajaj Finance Limited, to reflect a business that had outgrown vehicle lending.
2013The company reports that it has started borrowing from retail depositors as well as wholesale lenders, changing the shape of its funding.
2014The funding model is fully reversed from the early years: it now borrows retail and lends wholesale as well as retail.
2017The company partners with MobiKwik, the mobile wallet, and takes a stake in the business.
2018A 12.6 per cent holding in MobiKwik is recorded in the company's financial year 2017 to 2018 accounts.
2022In September the Reserve Bank of India places the company in the upper layer of its scale based regulation framework for non banking lenders.
2022In November the company buys up to 40 per cent of Mumbai based SnapWork Technologies for about 93 crore rupees.
2022Assets cross 2 lakh crore rupees, growing 31 per cent in a year, as the consumer and mortgage books expand.
2023In January the company launches its loan against property business for micro, small and medium sized enterprise customers.
2023In October it acquires a 26 per cent stake in Hyderabad based Pennant Technologies for about 267.50 crore rupees.
2023In November the Reserve Bank of India bars the company from approving or distributing loans through two of its lending products, eCOM and the Insta EMI Card.
2024In May the company tells the exchanges that the regulator has lifted the restrictions after it took remedial action.
2024Bajaj Housing Finance, the housing arm, goes public with an initial public offering.
2024In September the borrowing mix stands at 47 per cent money markets, 29 per cent bank borrowings, 20 per cent deposits and 4 per cent external commercial borrowings, with deposits of about 66,131 crore rupees.
2024In November the company raises 400 million dollars from the International Finance Corporation to expand its climate finance operations in India.
2024In December it ends its co-branded credit card partnerships with RBL Bank and DBS Bank after new Reserve Bank of India rules restrict the role of non banking partners.
2025It re-enters the credit card market by partnering with Bharti Airtel on a co-branded Insta EMI Card.
2026In August the Arthsutra Samvad financial literacy programme is run in rural Odisha, part of a national financial inclusion effort.
2026For the year ended March 2026 the company reports revenue reported at about 81,982 crore rupees and a net profit of about 19,017 crore rupees, with a final quarter profit of about 5,465 crore rupees.the quarter profit was up about 22 per cent on the year before
2026Assets under management reach about 5.47 lakh crore rupees in the quarter ended June 2026.
What it does
Bajaj Finance Limited is a deposit taking non banking financial company, which in Indian regulatory language means a lender that can take public deposits but cannot operate as a bank. It lends to consumers, to small and medium sized enterprises and to commercial borrowers, and it raises money from banks, money markets, bond investors and its own depositors. It is headquartered in Pune.[1]
The company's scale is best measured by assets under management, which reached about 5.47 lakh crore rupees in the quarter ended June 2026. Total assets stood at about 4.66 lakh crore rupees in March 2026 and revenue for the year ended March 2026 was reported at about 81,982 crore rupees, with a net profit of about 19,017 crore rupees. The Financial Times and other international press have described it as India's biggest shadow bank, a label that captures both its size and the fact that it lends without a banking licence.[1]
Its product range covers consumer durable loans, personal loans, two and three wheeler finance, mortgages and loans against property, small business loans, commercial lending and a securities brokerage. It also takes fixed deposits from the public and sells mutual funds, so it sits somewhere between a lender, a deposit taker and a distributor of financial products.[1]
One feature of the model is unusual and worth understanding. A large share of the company's lending is arranged at the point of sale, in shops selling electronics, appliances, furniture and vehicles, and part of its revenue comes from the manufacturers and retailers who pay for access to that customer base rather than only from the interest the borrower pays. That makes retail partnerships a source of both loan volume and fee income.[1]
History
Bajaj Finance was incorporated on 25 March 1987 as Bajaj Auto Finance Limited, a non banking financial company created to finance the two and three wheelers that the Bajaj group was then selling in large numbers. For its first decade it was essentially a captive vehicle financier attached to a manufacturer.[1]
After eleven years in the auto finance market the company made its initial public offer of equity shares and listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India. Listing changed it from a group financing arm into a company with outside shareholders and a market valuation to defend.[1][2][3]
At the turn of the century the company entered consumer durables finance and began offering small loans, and in the following years it added business loans and property loans. That expansion is the origin of the point of sale lending model that later defined the business, because consumer durables finance is sold in shops rather than in branches.[1]
In 2007 the group separated its manufacturing operations from its financial operations. The split produced Bajaj Finserv as the holding company for the finance businesses, with Bajaj Finance as one of its subsidiaries, and it is the reason the company's parent today holds about 52.49 per cent of its shares. In 2010 the registered name changed from Bajaj Auto Finance Limited to Bajaj Finance Limited, to reflect a business that had widened well beyond vehicles.[1]
The funding side changed more slowly than the lending side. In its first seven years the company mainly borrowed wholesale and lent retail, which is the natural posture of a young lender with no deposit base. Since 2014 it has also borrowed retail, taking public deposits, and lent wholesale, which means it now funds itself partly from ordinary savers and lends to businesses as well as consumers.[1]
The most recent structural change is the mortgage business. In January 2023 the company launched its loan against property product for micro, small and medium sized enterprise customers, and mortgages became the largest single slice of its assets under management. Its housing finance arm went public in 2024, which turned part of the group into a separately listed company.[1]
Founders and leadership
The company was founded within the Bajaj group, and its founder was Rahul Bajaj, the industrialist who led Bajaj Auto for decades and whose family had built the group from a trading and sugar business in the nineteenth century. Bajaj Finance began as a way to help customers pay for the group's own vehicles, which is the classic origin of a captive finance company.[1]
Leadership of the parent sits with Sanjiv Bajaj, who has chaired the group's financial services businesses and who speaks publicly for them. When the company announced its plan to enter microfinance by 2025, it was Sanjiv Bajaj who described the intention. The parent company, Bajaj Finserv, holds about 52.49 per cent of Bajaj Finance and therefore decides who runs it.[1][11]
Day to day management is in the hands of Rajeev Jain, the managing director, who has led the business through the period in which it became the largest non bank lender in the country. Business Today profiled him in a piece whose title is simply about how he is transforming Bajaj Finance, and he has been the public face of its strategy of lending across consumer, mortgage and small business segments at once.[1][4]
The governance arrangement is a holding company structure rather than a family run firm. Bajaj Finserv owns the controlling stake, Bajaj Finance is run by professional management, and the group's insurance and housing businesses sit alongside it. For a reader trying to place the company inside the Bajaj group, that is the important fact: it is the lending arm of a financial services holding company, not an independent enterprise.[1]
Consumer lending
Consumer lending is the oldest and most distinctive part of the business. The company finances purchases of electronics, appliances, furniture and other consumer durables at the point of sale, and it lends to consumers directly through personal loans and through finance for two and three wheelers. Much of this lending is arranged inside a shop, in minutes, on the strength of documents the customer already has.[1]
The distribution that supports it is built partly out of other people's shops. As of March 2023 the company reported about 294 consumer branches, about 497 rural locations, more than 33,000 distribution points and more than 1,50,000 stores where its products are available. That network is the reason the company can reach customers that a branch based bank would not serve profitably.[1]
The Insta EMI Card is the clearest example of how the model has been productised. It gives a customer a pre-approved spending limit usable at partner stores, which converts a loan application into a checkout step. The card became central enough to the business that when the Reserve Bank of India suspended lending through it in November 2023, the company's own description of the event treated it as a material restriction on its operations.[1][13]
Consumer lending carries the highest credit risk in the portfolio, because the loans are small, unsecured and often taken by first time borrowers. That risk is managed through rapid underwriting, tight ticket sizes and the ability to suspend a customer's limit, but it is inherent to the business, and the company's bad debt numbers move with the health of household incomes rather than with the corporate cycle.[1]
SME and commercial lending
Small business lending is the second leg of the company's growth. Having started with consumers, it now lends to small and medium sized enterprises, to commercial borrowers and to rural customers, and it launched a dedicated loan against property product for micro, small and medium sized enterprises in January 2023. Loans against property are secured, which makes them a lower risk way to lend larger amounts.[1]
By December 2024 the composition of the book showed how far this shift had gone. Mortgages made up about 31 per cent of consolidated assets under management, SME lending about 14 per cent and commercial lending about 13 per cent. In other words roughly a third of the book was secured against property and more than a quarter was business lending, with consumer loans making up the rest.[1]
Business lending changes the funding requirement. Consumer loans are short and repay quickly, while loans against property and commercial loans run for years, so the company has had to lengthen the maturity of what it borrows. That is part of why public deposits, which can be taken for fixed terms, matter to it: deposits give it funding that lasts longer than a money market borrowing.[1]
The company has also invested in the technology behind credit decisions in this segment, buying minority stakes in firms such as SnapWork Technologies and Pennant Technologies. Those purchases are small in money and strategic in purpose, aimed at the software and data that underwrite small business loans rather than at the loans themselves.[1][9]
Deposits and wealth management
Taking public deposits is what distinguishes Bajaj Finance from most non bank lenders in India. It is registered to accept deposits from the public, and by 30 September 2024 it held about 66,131 crore rupees of them, worth roughly 6.9 billion dollars at the time. Those deposits give the company a source of money that does not depend on banks being willing to lend to it.[1]
The borrowing mix as of 30 September 2024 was 47 per cent money markets, 29 per cent bank borrowings, 20 per cent deposits and 4 per cent external commercial borrowings. That is a deliberately diversified structure: money markets are flexible and quick, bank lines are relationship driven, deposits are stickier and external commercial borrowings bring in foreign currency. No single source funds the business.[1]
Alongside deposits the company distributes mutual funds and other investment products, and its securities arm, Bajaj Financial Securities, trades as Bajaj Broking and handles stock market equity trading. These businesses earn fees rather than interest and give customers with money to invest a reason to stay inside the group instead of going to a bank or a broker.[1]
The deposit franchise also has a marketing cost. Fixed deposits from the public have to be advertised, priced competitively against bank deposits and serviced through branches and online channels, which is why the company's reported distribution network of consumer branches, rural locations and partner stores is doing double duty: the same network that sells loans also collects deposits and distributes investment products.[1]
Credit cards and partnerships
For years the company issued credit cards through partnerships with banks rather than on its own balance sheet, because a non banking financial company cannot issue a credit card by itself. It ran co-branded card programmes with RBL Bank and DBS Bank, which put its customer acquisition machine behind another institution's card licence.[1][8]
That arrangement ended in early December 2024, when the company terminated the partnerships in response to new Reserve Bank of India rules restricting the role of non banking partners in co-branded card agreements. The rules had been made because the regulator wanted the bank that holds the licence to be genuinely in control of the product. For Bajaj Finance it meant losing a distribution channel it had invested in.[1]
The company re-entered the space quickly. In early 2025 it partnered with Bharti Airtel to launch a co-branded Insta EMI Card, which combines its point of sale lending engine with a large telecom customer base. The shift from bank partnerships to a telecom partnership follows the same logic: find a partner with a licence or with customers, and supply the underwriting.[1]
The Insta EMI Card is also the product at the centre of the company's worst regulatory episode. In November 2023 the Reserve Bank of India banned it from approving or distributing loans through its eCOM and Insta EMI Card products, and the restriction was only lifted in May 2024 after remedial action. The episode showed how much of the company's growth ran through a single product family.[1][13][14][15][16]
Revenue and financials
Bajaj Finance's accounts for the year ended March 2026 show revenue reported at about 81,982 crore rupees, operating income of about 25,817 crore rupees and a net profit of about 19,017 crore rupees. Total assets stood at about 4.66 lakh crore rupees and shareholders' equity at about 96,693 crore rupees. The final quarter alone produced a profit of about 5,465 crore rupees, up about 22 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier, and the board declared a dividend of about 6 rupees a share.[1]
The figures need one caution attached to them. Non bank lenders report on a different rhythm from banks, and some of the headline numbers published for the company are quarterly while others are annual, so a reader comparing them with a bank's accounts is comparing slightly different things. What is not ambiguous is the direction and the scale: the company earns more in a year than most Indian private banks, on a balance sheet roughly a quarter of their size.[1]
Profitability of that kind comes from margin and from efficiency. The company borrows at wholesale and deposit rates it negotiates, lends at consumer rates that are considerably higher, and runs the business through partner stores rather than a dense branch network, so its cost to income ratio is lower than a bank's. Higher yields and lower costs together are why its return on assets sits well above the banking average.[1][10]
Its debt carries the highest domestic ratings. CRISIL, ICRA and CARE all rate its long term debt AAA+ stable, with equivalent ratings on its non convertible debentures. Those ratings are the reason it can borrow at close to the rate a strong bank pays, and any change in them would be the earliest public signal that the market was rethinking the quality of its loan book.[1]
The shares are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange and are constituents of both the BSE SENSEX and the NIFTY 50, which means index funds hold them whether or not they chose to. A substantial part of the shareholder register is therefore passive money that follows the index rather than a judgement about the company.[1][2][3]
Shareholding and ownership
Bajaj Finance is controlled by its parent. Bajaj Finserv holds about 52.49 per cent of the total shares, which gives it a controlling stake in the subsidiary and the ability to appoint its board. Bajaj Finserv is itself listed, so a reader who wants to understand who ultimately owns the lender has to look one level up, at the holding company's own shareholders.[1]
That structure is the product of the 2007 separation of the group's manufacturing and financial operations. Rather than keep one large company, the group placed its insurance, lending, housing finance and asset management businesses under Bajaj Finserv, and Bajaj Finance became the lending subsidiary within it. The holding company structure is common in Indian financial services because different licences require different ownership arrangements.[1]
Within the listed subsidiary the free float is large. With about 52.49 per cent held by the parent, close to half the shares trade freely, held mainly by mutual funds, insurance companies and foreign portfolio investors. Because the stock is in both the SENSEX and the NIFTY 50, a sizeable portion of that float belongs to index funds that must hold it.[1][2]
For a reader judging the company, the ownership answer is straightforward: there is no question about who controls it. Sanjiv Bajaj's group holds the majority through Bajaj Finserv, management answers to a board appointed by that majority, and minority shareholders own the economic remainder. The company is a professionally managed subsidiary of a family controlled group rather than either extreme on its own.[1]
Employees and offices
Bajaj Finance runs a distribution network rather than a branch network, and that shapes where its people are. As of March 2023 the company reported about 294 consumer branches and about 497 rural locations, supported by more than 33,000 distribution points and over 1,50,000 stores where its products are sold. Its headquarters is in Pune, in Maharashtra.[1]
The company has not published a stable employee count in the same way a bank does, and the number that appears in its own reporting changes with how the mortgage and consumer businesses are staffed. What is clear from the distribution numbers is the shape of the workforce: a relatively small central establishment in Pune and a large field organisation spread across partner stores, rural locations and branch offices.[1]
The offices that matter most commercially are the ones it does not own. Its products are sold inside electronics shops, vehicle dealerships, furniture stores and thousands of other retail outlets, and the staff in those stores are the first point of contact for a Bajaj Finance loan. That is a deliberate choice to rent distribution rather than build it, and it is the main reason the company reaches customers far more cheaply than a bank branch network would allow.[1]
Pune itself is a deliberate location for a financial services group. The city has a large pool of engineering, information technology and finance talent, and the Bajaj group's head office has been there for generations. For a lender whose advantage is underwriting technology and process speed rather than geographic footprint, that labour pool is an asset.[1]
Acquisitions and investments
Bajaj Finance's acquisition record is a series of small, deliberate stakes rather than large takeovers. In the financial year 2017 to 2018 it acquired a 12.6 per cent stake in MobiKwik, the mobile wallet company, and separately entered a partnership with it to reach customers through the wallet. The bet was on digital payments becoming a distribution channel for lending.[1][6][7]
In November 2022 the company acquired up to 40 per cent of Mumbai based SnapWork Technologies for about 93 crore rupees, and in October 2023 it took a 26 per cent stake in Hyderabad based Pennant Technologies for about 267.50 crore rupees. Both companies work in the software and data layer of financial services, and both purchases were about the technology rather than about the customers.[1][9]
The largest structural move was not an acquisition at all but a listing. Bajaj Housing Finance, which provides home loans, loans against property and lease rental discounting, went public in 2024. That gave the housing business its own shares and its own valuation while leaving Bajaj Finance as its parent, and it allowed the group to raise capital for the mortgage book without diluting the lender itself.[1]
The company has also raised money directly for lending. In November 2024 it raised 400 million dollars from the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private sector arm, to expand its climate finance operations in India. That money came as debt investment rather than equity, which is how a lender finances a new lending segment, and it was among the first large climate finance facilities arranged for an Indian non bank lender.[1]
Competition
Bajaj Finance competes on two fronts at once. On one side it takes consumer and small business lending business away from banks, which have cheaper funding but slower processes and higher costs per small loan. On the other it competes with other non bank lenders, which face the same funding costs it does and usually compete on speed, ticket size and reach into segments banks neglect.[1]
Its position among non bank lenders is unusual because of its size. It was placed in the upper layer of the Reserve Bank of India's scale based regulation framework in September 2022, a list of the largest non bank lenders that the regulator supervises more closely. Being on that list is an acknowledgement of systemic importance as much as a burden, since it brings stricter capital, governance and disclosure requirements with it.[1][12]
The banks it competes with are also its lenders. Indian banks fund much of the non bank lending sector, and when the regulator tightens rules on bank lending to non bank lenders, the cost and availability of money for companies like this one change immediately. That dependence is the structural weakness of the non bank business model, and it is part of why the company has worked to build a deposit base of its own.[1]
Within consumer finance the competitive field includes the consumer lending arms of large banks, payment companies offering credit at the point of sale and newer digital lenders. The company's defence is its store network, its speed of approval and the data it has accumulated on repeat customers, none of which a new entrant can assemble quickly. Its vulnerability is that the same product set can be copied by anyone with a bank licence and cheaper money.[1][14]
Controversies and criticism
The company's most significant regulatory episode began in November 2023, when the Reserve Bank of India barred it from approving or distributing loans through two of its lending services, eCOM and the Insta EMI Card. The order stopped new lending through products that had been central to the company's growth, and it was reported as a serious blow to the stock at the time.[1][13][14]
The restriction was lifted in May 2024. In an exchange filing the company announced that the regulator had removed the curbs after it took remedial action, and coverage at the time noted that the ban was resolved in months rather than years. Even so, the episode established that a large share of the company's lending ran through a narrow set of products that a single supervisory order could switch off.[1][16]
The company has also drawn criticism for the interest rates it charges. Point of sale consumer lending carries yields well above bank lending rates, which is the source of the company's profitability and also the source of complaints that customers taking small loans for appliances or phones pay a high price for credit. That trade off between access and cost is the central debate about non bank consumer lending in India.[1]
The 2024 co-branded card episode is a subtler criticism. When the company ended its card partnerships with RBL Bank and DBS Bank in December 2024 after new rules restricted non banking partners, the regulatory concern was that such arrangements let a non bank control a product a bank was supposed to own. The company complied and rebuilt the product with a telecom partner, but the episode showed where its growth model met the limits of banking regulation.[1]
Reading the numbers
The first number to read is assets under management, which reached about 5.47 lakh crore rupees in the quarter ended June 2026 and which measures the loan book the company actually runs. Total assets of about 4.66 lakh crore rupees in March 2026 is a related but smaller figure, because assets under management includes loans the company has arranged and sold on as well as those it holds.[1]
The second is the ratio of profit to the book. A net profit of about 19,017 crore rupees on about 4.66 lakh crore rupees of assets is a return near 4 per cent, which is roughly three times what a large Indian private bank earns on its assets. That gap is the whole explanation for why a non bank lender with a fraction of a bank's balance sheet can carry a comparable market value: it lends at much higher rates and runs a much cheaper distribution network.[1][10]
The third is funding. Money markets supplied 47 per cent of borrowings as of 30 September 2024, banks 29 per cent, deposits 20 per cent and external commercial borrowings 4 per cent. Money market funding is the most sensitive to stress, so the share it holds is a direct measure of the company's exposure to a credit market that tightens exactly when a lender needs money most.[1]
The fourth is the growth of the secured book. Mortgages at about 31 per cent of assets under management in December 2024 against consumer lending forming the rest means the company has been shifting toward loans backed by property. That is a safer book and a lower yielding one, so the shift improves resilience while it gradually reduces the extraordinary returns that made the company famous.[1]
Read together the numbers describe a company that has completed its transition from a captive vehicle financier into a diversified lender, and that now has to defend margins built on high yield consumer credit while its growth increasingly comes from the lower risk mortgages and small business loans that banks can also write. Every figure is dated, because in this business a number without a year is a number that will be wrong within months.[1][5]
