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Piramal Finance secures AA plus long-term rating from Crisil
MUMBAI: Crisil Ratings has assigned a long-term rating of AA plus/Stable to Piramal Finance, a step up that underscores the lender’s multi-year shift into a scaled, retail-focused non-bank.
The upgrade applies to the company’s non-convertible debentures and bank debt, while the A1 plus rating on its commercial paper was reaffirmed. Piramal Finance carries outstanding borrowings of about Rs 75,000 crore.
Crisil cited sustained improvements in asset quality, a more granular retail loan book, strengthening profitability and a conservative liquidity position. The rating also reflects promoter strength, which provides financial flexibility and stability, alongside growing institutional confidence in governance and risk management.
Over the past four to five years, the lender has tightened underwriting, diversified its liabilities and invested heavily in technology-led risk and collections frameworks. Its retail portfolio has expanded rapidly, supported by data analytics and AI-driven decision-making across origination and monitoring.
Piramal Finance MD and CEO Jairam Sridharan, said the AA plus/stable rating validates the firm’s disciplined approach to risk, governance and execution, and strengthens its access to competitive long-term funding.
Classified by the RBI as an upper-layer nbfc, Piramal Finance raised nearly Rs 21,000 crore in long-term funding in FY25. Its assets under management stand at about Rs 91,000 crore, with plans to scale beyond Rs 1.5 lakh crore by FY28 as profitability continues to improve.
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Practo names Cijo George as vice president of artificial intelligence
New vice president of artificial intelligence to mine healthcare data and sharpen care delivery
BENGALURU: India’s healthtech race just picked up speed. Practo has appointed Cijo George as vice president of artificial intelligence, tasking him with wiring AI deep into the company’s sprawling healthcare platform.
George will steer AI strategy and execution, embedding machine intelligence across care navigation, doctor-facing tools and overall platform intelligence. He will work across product, engineering and clinical teams to rewire how patients search for and access care — and how doctors deliver treatment with greater consistency and precision.
He reports directly to Shashank ND, co-founder and chief executive officer.
Shashank ND said years of building healthcare data across patients, providers and treatment outcomes had laid the foundation for more advanced AI applications. Artificial intelligence, he added, can unlock the value of that data to improve patient outcomes and equip doctors with actionable insights. He described George’s experience in building production-grade AI systems as closely aligned with Practo’s long-term vision.
George brings nearly two decades of experience spanning machine learning, AI platforms and product engineering. Most recently at Observe.AI, he led work on large-scale AI systems deployed by global enterprises. Before that, at Belong.co, he drove platform and AI initiatives focused on search and personalisation in the HR technology space. He also worked with the Advanced Technology Group at NetApp, contributing to machine-learning and data-science projects for distributed systems.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Science with a master’s degree in high performance computing, George said the chance to apply AI to directly improve patient experience and clinical delivery drew him to the role. Practo’s scale and its extensive longitudinal healthcare data, he added, offer significant room for innovation.
The move comes as digital health platforms double down on artificial intelligence to boost patient engagement, streamline provider workflows and sharpen decision-making. For Practo, the prescription is clear: turn data into diagnosis, and algorithms into advantage.
