PayU Finance elevates Piyush Gupta as Chief Data Scientist

PayU Finance, one of the leading digital lenders in India and the NBFC unit of PayU, has elevated Piyush Gupta as the company’s new Chief Data Scientist, strengthening its leadership team. Piyush’s extensive knowledge and expertise will drive PayU Finance closer to its ambition of becoming a full-stack digital financial services platform to serve diverse financial needs of customers with data science and technology innovations at the forefront.

In his new role as Chief Data Scientist, Piyush will lead the data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) teams for PayU Finance to drive financial inclusion for the under-served and under-banked customers. His new responsibilities include creating and executing the overall data strategy for PayU Finance, leading the growth of the consumer business through innovation in Machine Learning (ML) and AI, and enabling the democratization of the data and models. He will also focus on building ethical AI algorithms to build consumer insights and avoid data-biases, especially in credit models.

Commenting on the announcement, Prashanth Ranganathan, CEO, PayU Finance said, “Piyush is a dynamic leader and an entrepreneur at heart. He has led the transformation of the credit business in the past year by bringing our products to more than 60+ million pre-approved customers through innovative use of data and AI models. As we move towards becoming a full-stack digital financial services platform for consumers, ML and AI will be at the forefront of innovation. I am confident that Piyush will play an instrumental role in streamlining PayU Finance’s data strategy to achieve our mission.”

Piyush Gupta, Chief Data Scientist, PayU Finance said, “India has close to 800 million potential banking consumers. However, majority of the financial solutions in the market addresses the needs of only the top 20-30 million consumers. In my new role, I will work towards the next phase of growth at PayU Finance by enabling our products to hundreds of millions of consumers and supporting our ambition of evolving from a digital credit provider to a digital consumer company in the financial services ecosystem.”

Piyush is a seasoned data science leader with over a decade of experience in the industry. His previous outfits include a variety of senior positions at Citibank, PaySense, and Mu-Sigma. He has completed his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his previous role at PayU Finance as Vice President of Data Science, Piyush spearheaded efforts to develop next-generation ML and AI models to accelerate the adoption of innovative consumer credit products, manage risks, and improve customer experience.