Abhishek Agarwal

Abhishek Agarwal began his career as an engineer with Thomson Reuters followed by a stint on Wall Street as an analyst with a top interfirm dealer brokerage. He has worked closely as a consultant with various startups in domains as diverse as fashion, retail banking, mobile VAS, and digital design across India, the US and UK markets. He moved to Mumbai in 2010 to take up the role of Head of Products and Data Strategy at Experian, the world’s leading credit bureau. It was around this time that he recognized the inadequacy of the traditional methods of credit underwriting when his loan application for a laptop was rejected based on a lack of credit history. He realised that credit scoring methodologies employed by traditional bureaus make formal credit inaccessible to the average Indian. He launched CreditVidya in 2013 along with Rajiv Raj to make credit more accessible to first-time borrowers. Since then, he has pioneered and advocated alternate data credit scoring using Machine learning and AI to create more accurate and inclusive credit scores, helping banks and NBFCs make better decisions when it comes to first-time borrowers. Abhishek holds an engineering degree from Minnesota and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and London Business School.