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ICICI Lombard and IIT Bombay crown winners of Igniting Minds 2025
MUMBAI: ICICI Lombard’s flagship case-study challenge, IL Igniting Minds 2025 season three, wrapped up in Mumbai with a burst of ideas, energy and campus talent. Run in partnership with IIT Bombay’s E-Cell, the competition drew more than 4000 student registrations from over 500 leading institutes, making this edition the most extensive yet.
Centred on the theme unlocking SME insurance growth in India, the challenge asked students to rethink how small and medium enterprises can access and adopt insurance. With over 6.3 crore SMEs powering India’s economy but still grappling with low insurance penetration, participants were encouraged to reimagine product design, digital pathways and smarter distribution strategies.
This year broadened the competition’s reach, building on earlier editions held with IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow and Nmims, which together engaged more than 4500 students across 700 campuses.
ICICI Lombard head of marketing, corporate communications and CSR Sheena Kapoor, said the response surpassed expectations. She noted that the season brought together thousands of young minds brimming with curiosity and purpose and praised the finalists for delivering sharply reasoned solutions backed by real-world insight.
The grand finale at ICICI Lombard’s Mumbai office saw students present their ideas to senior leaders. IIT Delhi claimed the winning title, while IIM Ranchi secured the first runner-up position. Both teams were felicitated by the company’s leadership, rounding off a season that proved both competitive and creatively charged.
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PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
