Can Bajaj Finserv still dominate the credit game?

livemint.com:

Mumbai: Sometime in 2008, a team from financier Bajaj Finserv was at a consumer durables store when a family of four walked in. They wanted to buy a 32-inch television on loan but were told it would take at least three days. The Bajaj team wondered why the loan could not be processed the same day so that the family could take the TV home by evening.

That’s when the (then) new kid on the block decided to disrupt the appliance and consumer electronics market. Soon, Bajaj Finserv, which was born out of the 2007 demerger of Bajaj Auto, began reaching out to manufacturers such as LG, Samsung and others to explain its new proposition. It tried to get these companies, which spent millions on advertising, to spend some money on a finance scheme so that consumers could buy products at zero interest.

Eventually, they agreed. “Our team managed to crack Samsung first, and once that happened, everybody else came on board within a year," recalls Sanjiv Bajaj, chairman and managing director, Bajaj Finserv. The availability of customer credit scores from credit information companies and the proliferation of large-format stores in metros aided Bajaj’s push for quicker loans.

The company soon realized that 40% of its customers were upgrading to higher value products rather than what they had initially planned to purchase, giving it more headroom for growth. Bajaj Finserv is the financial services arm of the $107.6 billion Bajaj group. It acts as the holding company for consumer durables financier Bajaj Finance, two insurance ventures, a digital marketplace, a healthcare solutions provider, a mutual fund, and an alternate investment venture.