On Tuesday, Setu, a well-known fintech business in India and a member of the Pine Labs Group, presented Sesame, the country’s first Large Language Model (LLM) created especially for the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industry.
This is a “ChatGPT moment” for financial services, according to the company, which developed it in partnership with the local AI research firm Sarvam AI. The unveiling was held at Adbhut India, an event hosted by the nonprofit People+ai. Notable figures from the fintech, AI, and digital public infrastructure sectors were present, including Tanuj Bhojwani, the head of People+ai, Shankar Maruwada, and Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder and director of EkStep Foundation.
“We want to democratize financial services at Setu,” stated Nikhil Kumar, one of the company’s co-founders. “We think that the key to making this a reality is the potent mix of revolutionary technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) and the Account Aggregator framework. In the same manner that India set the standard for ground-breaking inventions like Aadhaar and UPI, Kumar continued, “We are thrilled to develop responsible, relevant, and compliant AI applications that highlight India’s leadership in applied AI.
Sesame powers a number of functions by utilizing the enormous data ecosystem made possible by India’s digital infrastructure. These include of enhanced fraud detection, loan monitoring, credit underwriting, upselling and cross-selling, and personal finance counseling. Together, Setu and Sarvam AI have trained Sesame on unique data that is extremely pertinent to India’s BFSI industry, making it both domain- and region-specific. This involves fusing delivery models with a domain-specific LLM. This enables business clients to legally utilize the enormous volumes of financial data that are accessible both internally and externally. The goal of Setu is to enable BFSI clients to make quicker, more informed credit decisions. Additionally, it wants to offer its clients highly customized financial services for the duration of their lives.
“The nature of computation is significantly changing with the advent of generative AI. The value of what can be achieved with one rupee of compute has significantly increased, according to Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam AI’s co-founder. One instance of using this technology to add value in the BFSI market is our partnership with Setu. We demonstrated that the accuracy of extracting insights from financial statements can be greatly improved. We think this is a model that can be used to other industries where India has established key digital public goods,” he continued.
