L&T Finance’s Kavita Jagtiani on moving financial marketing from products to human dreams

India’s financial services sector is in the middle of a major reset. Traditional boundaries between banks, NBFCs, and fintechs are blurring as all three battle for the same customer base. While banks lean on their legacy and regulatory heft, fintechs are winning mindshare with speed, simplicity, and digital-first journeys. NBFCs, meanwhile, are navigating a complex path, reassuring customers of safety while offering the ease of new-age platforms.

Marketing in this space has evolved accordingly. Financial communication today is expected to signal trust, showcase transparency, and connect emotionally with customer aspirations. 

It is against this backdrop that L&T Finance has reoriented its strategy. Once a wholesale-driven brand, the company is now largely retail-focused, with an emphasis on financial accessibility and transparency. The shift has altered the business mix and demanded a new brand identity and approach to customer engagement. 

Leading this transformation on the marketing front is Kavita Jagtiani, Chief Marketing Officer, L&T Finance. For her, the pivot has been less about campaigns and more about redefining the company’s relationship with its customers.

“The customer-centric approach is the cornerstone of our company-wide pivot from wholesale to retail,” Jagtiani said. “This transformation was aimed at empowering customers with accessible, transparent lending options via seamless digital experiences, promoting financial well-being and a sustainable approach to borrowing and building futures.”

To mark the transition, L&T Finance’s refreshed brand identity, including a new sonic identity. Sharing the reason why, Jagtiani said, “A key element was introducing a sonic identity, a distinctive sound that consistently binds all customer touchpoints and ensures brand recognition for every customer, regardless of their location.” 

The goal was to establish a position as a digitally native brand that combines trust, confidence, and innovation, while using AI to deliver experiences at scale. 

To stand out, L&T Finance has relied on a mix of refreshed campaigns, digital collaborations, and technology. “We launched comprehensive category refresh campaigns for our Home Loans, Business Loans and Two-wheeler products. We dug deep in understanding the latent customer needs, which resonated on an emotional level,” Jagtiani said.

But logos and taglines can only go so far. For any NBFC, the bigger test lies in customer trust, an area where banks have had the upper hand.

Closing the trust gap with banks

NBFCs often face the perception hurdle of being less secure than banks. For L&T Finance, the response has been two-pronged: leaning on its parent brand’s legacy and ensuring transparent communication. “We inherit a lot of trust through the legacy of our parent brand, Larsen & Toubro,” Jagtiani said.

She shared that to bridge any trust gap, the brand maintains transparency in its marketing, communicating all fees, interest rates, and loan terms upfront, by building authenticity by featuring real customer success stories in rural areas. 

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The aim, she shared, is “to create relatable and reassuring narratives.” 

While tackling trust, the company also had to confront another challenge: serving two very different demographics. Its customers in urban and rural India didn’t just need different products, they also responded to very different ways of being spoken to.

A split market

With 57% of its business in urban areas and 43% in rural markets, L&T Finance has developed product and media strategies for each. “In urban areas, our focus is on high-ticket financial products. In rural markets, our products are designed to support livelihoods and agricultural activities,” Jagtiani said.

Marketing follows that split. In metros, the brand uses a mix of digital, connected TV, and premium placements like airports to reach prime customers. In rural areas, outreach is more grassroots. 

“We prioritise below-the-line (BTL) strategies, including wall paintings, pamphlets, and carefully placed hoardings. All of our creative materials, including visuals and promotional language, are developed in the local, native language to make them more relatable,” she explained.

She shared that this localisation extends to their branch communication and is a key part of their on-ground activities.

The face of the brand

The appointment of cricketer Jasprit Bumrah as brand ambassador has also been a strategic move. Partnerships with digital payment platforms like Google Pay, Amazon Pay, CRED, and PhonePe extend reach, while the PLANET App 3.0 acts as a sourcing and engagement hub backed by MarTech-driven prediction tools.

Financial products may be transactional, but the campaigns are not. “We balance brand-led emotional storytelling with product-led communication by weaving them together seamlessly,” Jagtiani said.

The ads with Bumrah illustrate this approach. 

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Sharing why he was the right choice, Jagtiani said, “the core of this success lies in the powerful parallels we can draw with Bumrah. For instance, Bumrah is a proven game-changer on the cricket field, and our Business Loans are positioned as game-changers for entrepreneurs.” 

One spot, launched during the Asia Cup 2025, plays on Bumrah’s trademark run-up. As a hesitant customer worries about how long a loan will take, the TV behind him shows Bumrah charging in. The moment he bowls and takes a wicket, the customer’s loan is approved in real time, documents uploaded, processed, and cleared in sync with the delivery. The film ties cricket fever to the brand’s promise of speed, underlined by the tagline “Bumrah ki speed par.”

The diverse audience has forced the brand to sharpen its delivery model. And here lies the constant tension, how to scale with technology while keeping the human connection alive.

Relying on phygital

Technology is central, but not at the cost of the human touch. “Our core philosophy is to strike the right balance between advanced technology and the indispensable human touch,” Jagtiani said. L&T Finance continues to rely on its hybrid “phygital” model, combining on-ground presence in rural areas with hyper-personalised digital campaigns.

AI bot KAI is a key element of this strategy, designed to assist customers with empathetic, human-like conversations in multiple languages while ensuring compliance.

These AI-powered tools further help first-time borrowers navigate terms and processes. In essence, the phygital model allows L&T Finance to scale with technology while still hand-holding customers through some of their most important financial decisions.

Looking ahead, L&T Finance plans to deepen its positioning beyond products. “Our future lies in reinforcing the emotional benefit of our services, evolving our narrative from simply ‘we provide loans’ to a more resonant promise: ‘we empower your life goals,’” Jagtiani said.

The brand’s next phase of marketing will focus on transparency, digital ease, and AI-led personalisation, but always with a customer-first philosophy. “At its core, marketing is about understanding people and building trust. The goal is to solve a customer's problem and address their emotional needs,” Jagtiani concluded, circling back to the objective behind the recent brand refresh.