A family that pledges its gold should be able to follow every step of the loan in its own language, including the step that could end in an auction.
I lead product at Kanchanpeth Finance, a family-promoted, non-deposit-taking NBFC headquartered in Vadodara that lends against household gold. We run 412 branches across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, mostly in district towns. At 31 March 2026 our gold-loan assets under management were ₹4,860 crore across about 6.1 lakh active accounts, and total income for the year was ₹1,012 crore. The average loan is close to ₹80,000. My team of 46 product managers, designers, researchers, language editors and analysts owns the branch tablet, the customer app, our notices and the scripts branch staff use. Credit policy, loan-to-value limits, appraisal standards and auction decisions sit with credit, risk and collections; I answer for how those decisions reach the borrower.
I came to lending products through software for other people's counters. From July 2003 I wrote teller software for cooperative bank branches in Ahmedabad. Later I specified a microfinance field officer's tablet in rural Maharashtra and managed merchant collection products in Mumbai. Each job showed me that the person using a financial screen is rarely alone with it: a clerk, a field officer or a son with a smartphone is often reading it beside them. I joined Kanchanpeth in July 2018 to build its first app and became chief product officer in April 2022.
Three decisions describe my approach better than a feature list. I slowed our app top-up after scammers used it to persuade borrowers to send money back to them. I stopped building a self-service first-loan journey that new borrowers had read as a promise, and moved them back to an assisted counter. I rebuilt the notices that come before an auction so that a borrower hears them in Gujarati, Hindi or Marathi from someone at her own branch. Each choice cost us volume, speed or carrying cost, which I report beside the results.
A slower top-up with fewer scam losses
After 212 complaints in five months, we put a four-hour hold and a branch call-back on risky app top-ups. Monthly app top-up value fell from ₹96 crore to ₹79 crore, and complaints in the next five months fell to 17.
First loans returned to the counter
We stopped a self-service first-loan journey that 1.1 lakh people had started and only 9% completed at a branch. Counter time for a first loan fell from 41 to 29 minutes with the appraisal shown on the tablet.
Fewer auctions, longer resolutions
Accounts sent to auction fell from 9,800 in 2024–25 to 6,300 in 2025–26 after notices moved into the borrower's language. Resolution took 19 days longer on average, and the board saw both figures in the same paper.
Current focus
I am preparing our consent notices and data practices for the phased duties of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, and choosing which of the 31 items on our app roadmap to drop.
Conversations I welcome
I am open to a first independent directorship at a consumer-facing company whose customers rely on assisted service, with 22 days a year available, subject to my employer's consent and a careful conflicts review.
