Why Sachin Bansal can’t resist building tech in-house to boost Navi's fortunes

livemint.com:

BENGALURU : Sachin Bansal’s latest big bet that could propel his fintech startup Navi Technologies Ltd bears some heavy-hitting buzzwords—large language model, generative artificial intelligence—but this second-time entrepreneur has opted for the tougher path. Bansal, who previously co-founded e-commerce giant Flipkart and was the original posterboy of India’s startup ecosystem, is building most of the technology stack for Navi in-house. These include LLM apps, chatbots, a lending management system, and an app platform to speedily launch new products and services.

While this can be challenging and "slightly slows down" the development of new technology, "the flexibility we get is unmatched", Bansal said in an interview with Mint. After Bansal exited Flipkart in May 2018 following Walmart Inc.’s acquisition of the company, he pocketed a little over $1 billion from the sale of his shares. Over the last five years, the computer engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi has funnelled a significant portion of that wealth into building Navi, which Bansal plans to take public shortly (he had dropped plans for an IPO two years ago).

Of Navi’s 2,000-odd employees, about 500 are part of the company’s technology team, which comprises more than 350 engineers and about 70 data scientists. "We hire the best computer science grads from IITs and pay them well," said Bansal. The executive chairman and CEO of Navi started the company with an ambitious goal—“to make finance accessible to the masses and small businesses".