India Public Markets Insights - Q3 FY26 | Fintech Inside #107
I read earnings calls transcripts and analyst presentations from 23 financial institutions: here's what India's financial system is quietly telling us about the next 3 years.
Hi Insiders, I’m Osborne, an investor in early stage startups.
Welcome to the 107th edition of Fintech Inside. Fintech Inside is the front page of Fintech in emerging markets.
Thank you for supporting me and sticking around. Enjoy another satisfying week in fintech!
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🤔 One Big Thought
Every quarter, I sit down with every earnings call transcript and analyst presentation from the companies that run India’s financial system: the banks, the NBFCs, the insurers, the brokers, the fintechs. I read them as a practitioner trying to understand what is actually happening inside the financial services industry.
What are the best operators in the country seeing that the market hasn’t priced in yet? Where are the structural shifts hiding inside the quarterly numbers? What does the behaviour of 115M Bajaj Finance customers base tell us about where consumer credit is going? What does Groww’s ₹900 CAC tell us about the cost of acquiring India’s next investor?
This quarter, I covered 23 companies. 160 slides. 100+ insights.
The Q3 FY26 India Financial Services Insights Report is now out.
Why I write this report
Fintech Inside started as a newsletter to make sense of India’s financial services industry, not for traders, but for founders, operators, and investors who are building inside it.
This report is the most concentrated expression of that mission.
Every quarter, I synthesise what India’s most important financial institutions are telling their shareholders and translate it into signal for those of us who are building companies, deploying capital, or advising founders in this space.
The goal is simple: give you a map of where the white spaces are, where the blind spots are, and where the real opportunities are forming, before they become consensus.
What’s in this quarter’s report
Here are five things that stood out to me from Q3 FY26:
1. Every product is now a deposit funnel
India’s banks have quietly re-architected their entire product stack. Credit cards, auto loans, home loans, even payment devices, every product is being reframed as a deposit acquisition and relationship retention tool. NIM compression is structural. The race is no longer for loan market share. It’s for low-cost liability primacy. Founders building in lending infrastructure, payments, or banking SaaS need to understand this shift. It changes what banks will pay for.
2. AI has crossed from pilot to P&L
This is the quarter where the language changed. Nobody is “testing AI” anymore. Bajaj Finance has 800+ autonomous agents deployed across 24 business areas. AU Small Finance auto-resolves 60% of fraud alerts. Angel One’s engineers ship 37% AI-generated code. Pine Labs generates 20% of new product code with AI. These are operational metrics disclosed under analyst scrutiny. The cost-per-unit-of-output curve is bending in real time.
3. The unsecured credit cycle is behind us
Every major lender is simultaneously quality-upgrading or shrinking their unsecured book. Capital is rotating into gold loans, SME, business banking, and secured vehicle finance. When all the best operators make the same credit call at the same time, that’s a structural signal, not a coincidence.
4. India’s mutual fund industry has crossed a threshold
Monthly SIP inflows hit an all-time high of ₹31,000 crore in December 2025. The SIP asset base is now ₹17tn ($183bn), over 20% of industry AUM. The industry has crossed the threshold where redemption risk is permanently cushioned by perpetual monthly inflows. For anyone building wealth management, distribution, or savings products, the compounding dynamics have fundamentally changed.
5. The market has drawn a hard line on fintech
Paytm’s redemption arc is complete. Groww continues to outperform. Pine Labs and MobiKwik are bleeding below Nifty. The message from public markets is unambiguous: path-to-profitability is the only valuation currency. GMV storytelling is dead. If you’re raising fintech capital in 2025, the only question that matters is how many months to contribution positive.
Get the full report
The full 160-slide report, covering 23 companies across banking, NBFCs, insurance, wealth management, and fintech, is available to view now.
As always, this report is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice. The author may hold positions in companies mentioned.
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🎵 Song on loop
Fintech updates can get boring, so here’s an earworm: Ease into the weekend with a breezy track: Following the Sun by Super-Hi and Neeka (Spotify / Youtube). Good background music to listen to while you’re reading through this report.
✨ Call outs
[Newsletter] The folks at Popvax are bringing generative AI to cancer research and treatment. This post follows the story of Yash Bindal’s cancer journey and how Popvax is helping him find a cure specific to Yash and his cancer type.
[Photos] The team at NASA released stunning images clicked by the Artemis II astronauts. This collection is special and maybe its worth watching this video to understand the context behind the images. It’ll help you appreciate the images more.
👋🏾 That’s all Folks
If you’ve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me via DM at osborne.vc/dm. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.
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See you in the next edition.
whats the one signal from this quarter that surprised you most - something you almost didn't include but couldn't shake?