Piramal Finance's NEEYAT puts borrower intent over paperwork — Global Grand Effie

Piramal Finance (Piramal Capital & Housing Finance) became a retail lender to 'Bharat' — tier-2/3 small entrepreneurs, kirana owners, drivers and families whose incomes are real but whose paperwork is not. Standard credit systems rejected them not for lacking integrity but for lacking income proofs and formal job structures, and many excluded themselves before ever applying.

In January 2023 the brand answered with 'Hum Kaagaz Se Zyaada Neeyat Dekhte Hain' — 'we look at intent more than papers'. Rather than listing loan products, the films turned the company's actual underwriting stance into its story: a rickshaw driver who had been refused a home loan, a blacksmith rebuilding his trade. Every chapter was rooted in real customers met through ethnographic fieldwork, and the underlying hybrid model paired AI data with on-ground branches that talked to borrowers face to face.

The platform matured over three phases — introducing the idea, adding the 'let's talk' invitation, then Parakh films starring actual customers and a Neeyat 3.0 built explicitly as a growth brief. The idea worked because the marketing and the business ran on the same spine: underwriting people, not papers. In 2026 the entry 'NEEYAT: India's Real Credit Score' was named a Global Grand Effie winner for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.