Watch: Mahindra Finance CDO on how rural business insulated co against Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way enterprises, whether legacy or emerging, work. While some have launched new lines of product offerings to deal with the pandemic induced lockdown, others have seen growth in existing services.

Rural NBFC Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services’ direct business did not see as much of a change and was even able to roll out digital alternatives to traditional methods of lending.

The non-impact in business is owed to the company’s dependence on rural India, a geography that saw faster business resumption compared to urban India, Chief Digital Officer Tina Singh told TechCircle in an interview.

“While the rural economy was impacted, the agricultural output sustained the populations out there,” Singh added. Even as the company’s lending business halted during the lockdown, other business processes such as loan collections moved digital.

The company also saw its consumer facing mobile app pull in user registrations by a 100% increase, month over month. Additionally, Singh also spoke about challenges that rural India poses when building a digital financial services product for the masses.

In the interview, Singh shed light on Mahindra Finance’s digital strategy as well as its future roadmap. She also discussed the company’s approach with frontier technologies, blockchain and data analytics in the financial services sector. 

Prior to joining Mahindra Finance in 2016, Singh worked with ICICI Bank for over 13 years in various capacities. An IIM Bangalore graduate, Singh holds over 23 years of corporate experience, as per her LinkedIn profile.