Case Study: Bajaj Finance, Evaluating a High Growth NBFC

Bajaj Finance grew from a captive two-wheeler financier into one of the largest and most richly valued lenders on the NSE, compounding its loan book at a pace few Indian financial companies have matched. This case study takes the business apart: how an NBFC borrows, lends and earns a spread, how zero-cost EMIs at consumer durable counters built a customer franchise of tens of millions, and how that franchise was turned into a cross-sell machine across personal loans, mortgages, SME and gold loans. Then it reads the numbers the way a lender should be read: AUM growth, cost of funds, NIM, Stage 2 and Stage 3 assets, credit cost, ROA, ROE and leverage. It walks through the shocks the company absorbed, from demonetisation and the IL&FS liquidity crisis to COVID and the 2023 RBI action on its digital lending products, and closes with how to value a lender on price to book and a checklist you can apply to any high-growth NBFC using annual reports and screener.in.