NBFC Market Entry: Mapping India's Credit Consumer
Ran over 100 primary interviews to identify which credit products a Singapore NBFC could viably enter in India
Isha Agrawal
Senior Associate Consultant at Praxis Global Alliance
From their time as
Senior Associate Consultant
Praxis Global Alliance • 2025
Overview
Isha joined this project with a clear mandate: a Singapore-based NBFC wanted to enter the Indian credit market across five product categories, and the firm needed to understand whether real consumer demand existed and which products were viable for an NBFC to operate independently.
The Story
Isha joined this project with a clear mandate: a Singapore-based NBFC wanted to enter the Indian credit market across five product categories, and the firm needed to understand whether real consumer demand existed and which products were viable for an NBFC to operate independently.
She structured the research in two tracks. The first was over 100 primary interviews, split between consumer calls and expert interviews. For the consumer side, she ran 50 to 60 in-depth calls, each roughly an hour long, moving respondents from general financial habits into product-specific usage patterns. She sequenced the conversation deliberately: starting with credit cards, which most people understood, then moving through personal loans, consumer durable loans, bill payments, and BNPL, reserving the most nascent product, credit on UPI, for the end when rapport was established.
The expert interviews were structured by product category, with roughly five calls per product plus a set of ecosystem-level conversations to understand where the market was headed. A consumer survey capturing 750 to 800 responses ran in parallel to validate patterns at scale across India.
Synthesizing the Findings
After completing the calls, Isha segmented respondents into five to six consumer personas by age and financial behavior. The analysis surfaced a finding that shaped the final recommendation: short-term credit demand was far larger than expected, spanning tier two and tier three cities, and the primary driver of product adoption was not awareness but financial incentive, specifically EMI structures and discount offers.
The regulatory analysis ran alongside the consumer work. She mapped the regulatory constraints for each product category and found that two of the five, credit cards and credit on UPI, were not independently issuable by an NBFC without bank partnerships or minimum capital thresholds the client did not meet.
Recommendation
The final output recommended that the client enter personal loans, BNPL, and bill payments. BNPL was flagged as a high-demand opportunity particularly among younger consumers, with a high-level go-to-market plan outlining how the client could position in the Indian market. The recommendation was grounded in both the consumer demand evidence and the regulatory feasibility analysis.