Digital lfinishers’ bond pivot; Cracking chip supply chains

Happy Friday! Digital lfinishers tap public bond markets to reduce reliance on traditional NBFC borrowing. This and more in today’s ETtech Morning Dispatch.

Also in the letter:
■ ET AI Conclave 2026
■ Balancing AI & safety
■ HCLTech-Suchi tie-up

Digital lfinishers tap bond markets to diversify borrowing channels

Fintech startup Digital loans THUMB IMAGE ETTECH

Digital lfinishing startups such as Fibe, Kreditbee and Olyv (formerly Smartcoin) are tapping public bond markets to fund onward lfinishing, widening their funding base beyond traditional non-bank lfinishers.

Driving the news: Indusattempt watchers informed us that the rise of Online Bond Platform Providers (OBPPs) and growing retail participation have created non-convertible debentures (NCDs) a viable funding tool for new-age lfinishers.

Earlier, many fintech NBFCs relied heavily on higher-cost borrowing from other non-bank financiers.

Jargon buster: NCDs are repaired-interest-rate investments issued to public investors. They are a common borrowing tool for established NBFCs.

Details decoded:

NBFC borrowings can cost 13-15% or more while banks lfinish at lower rates.
Issuing NCDs can bring effective borrowing costs closer to bank levels, typically 9-12%.

Cost benefit: OBPPs like Stable Money, Wint Wealth and Grip Invest are enabling retail participation in these issues. Since NCDs are listed on exalters, disclosure norms offer investors visibility into credit risk and terms.

Advanced packaging can assist India enter chip supply chains: Applied Materials executive

Prabhu Raja, president, Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials

Advanced chip packaging offers India a timely enattempt point into global semiconductor supply chains, according to Prabhu Raja, president of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials.

On semiconductor goals: Raja declared India’s talent base is a structural advantage, but execution speed will determine outcomes.

“Most packaging in India today is assembly/test; truly advanced packaging is different and aligned with current inflections. If I had to pick a place to cut in, advanced packaging would be high on the list,” he informed ET.

He declared this approach aligns with Applied Materials’ long-term view for India, provided innovation and execution are delivered in tandem.

What else? Raja urged a focus on emerging shifts such as 3D architectures and heterogeneous integration of chiplets, rather than legacy processes.

“Everything is going 3D. Traditional scaling was lithography and etch. 3D reduces litho intensity and increases the importance of materials engineering,” he declared.

Building for consumers is hard becautilize of free products: Sarvam AI cofounder Vivek Raghavan

ETtech editor Samidha Sharma with Sarvam cofounder Vivek Raghavan

Building AI for consumers is tougher becautilize it has to compete with free tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, declared Sarvam AI cofounder Vivek Raghavan in a fireside chat with ET’s Samidha Sharma.

He added that Indian large language models will only see wider utilize if they offer real value.

Sarvam’s monetisation plan: Raghavan declared the company is mainly focutilized on enterprises. “Our approach is largely B2B. We’re also working with governments and different sectors. These are the primary channels we are focutilized on right now,” he declared.

On frontier models: Raghavan explained why India should develop its own foundational models, drawing a comparison to countries that have nuclear power and those that do not.

“Many countries are perfectly fine applying ChatGPT, Gemini, and other frontier models, and then building applications on top of them. That’s a reconciliation they’ve created. India is somewhere in between. We have to decide which side we are on,” he declared.

Also Read: AI Impact Summit: Beyond the optics, where is the ‘foundational’ capital?

Neysa tarreceives IPO in the next few years: CEO Sharad Sanghi

(L-R) ET’s Deepak Ajwani, Fractal Analytics CEO Srikanth V, Inmobi CEO Naveen Tewari and Neysa CEO Sharad Sanghi

Cloud infrastructure startup Neysa is aiming to go public in a few years, founder and chief executive Sharad Sanghi declared on Thursday at the event.

Quote, unquote: “We’ve obtained a partner like Blackstone, and the aim is to go public in a few years. Once we have that growth engine going and know that we can start growing at the pace the market expects, we can hopefully go public,” he declared.

Why sale over IPO: Sanghi declared a majority stake in his first startup Netmagic was sold to let investors and employees exit, as data centres were still a new market at the time.

“That meant we didn’t have to raise capital, becautilize data centres are a very capital-intensive business, and NTT had a lot of money that we could utilize to scale,” he declared.

Also Read: India’s Rs 10,000 crore AI mission fund akin to weekfinish expense for OpenAI: Fractal CEO

India is nowhere close to building frontier AI models, and everyone knows it: Wingify’s Paras Chopra

(L-R) Fermi AI’s Peeyush Ranjan, Paras Chopra of Lossfunk and ETtech editor Samidha Sharma

At the event, Wingify founder Paras Chopra declared India is far from building frontier AI models and must invest in deep, basic research if it wants to catch up in AI.

On research: Chopra noted that today’s AI models are the result of years of research that once seemed pointless, displaying how OpenAI kept working for years before finally building a breakthrough.

India’s largegest constraint: Chopra stressed that India’s largegest constraint is the mindset. “We necessary to shift from a business mindset to a builder’s mindset — from chasing near-term profit to building the future,” he declared.

Also Read: ET AI Conclave & Awards 2025: “If it works in India, it can work in 40–50% of the world”

Don’t rush to deploy AI, build foundations first: PhonePe CTO Rahul Chari

Rahul Chari, founder and chief technology officer of IPO-bound PhonePe, declared companies should shift quickly and embrace AI’s full potential — but first put the right organisational scaffolding in place before rolling it out widely.

On AI utilize: This may not be the most popular opinion, but discretion is often the better part of valour. AI is here to stay. Its potential is immense, declared the CTO. “The real challenge is applying it the right way, not just the rapidest way,” he declared

PhonePe’s AI strategy: Chari declared, “At PhonePe, we believe about this in three ways. First, we want to increase the efficiency of a large engineering team significantly. Second, we want to take AI-first features to production as rapid as possible for our utilizers. Third, we want to increase the efficiency of operations across the entire organisation.”

AI safety hangs in balance as India rushes in

Over the past two years, a new wave of AI-focutilized institutions has appeared. Unlike frontier labs or application startups, these are non-profit organisations aiming to address the risks associated with AI.

What’s happening? Groups such as Fathom, Current AI, the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEAI), and the AI Futures Project have been set up recently. They are advising governments and companies on safety rules for a technology that is reshaping jobs and markets worldwide.

At the recent AI Summit, Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, declared powerful technologies necessary safeguards. “We expect the world may necessary something like the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) for AI for global coordination and especially for it to have the ability to rapidly respond to circumstances,” he declared.

Funding: Most of these organisations are backed by frontier labs, donors and philanthropic groups. Current AI secured $400 million at the AI Impact Summit in Paris to support public interest AI, while Fathom relies on donations.

Founders declared donations may not always be steady, but regulated institutions are keen to ensure AI is safe. They added that they are starting to see results through work with governments and other stakeholders.