Bajaj’s consumer-financing operation was doing more than 100,000 loans a month when financing for digital products became a separate business line, according to Sanjiv Bajaj. Mobile-phone financing subsequently became another distinct line, with attention to differences in demand across cities.
Describing the approach in a July 23, 2026 interview with McKinsey, the Bajaj Finserv chairman and managing director said the aim was to keep individual operations manageable and financially viable. His account raises a question for expanding Indian companies: when should a product get a team with responsibility for its own business?
The Breakdown
Bajaj said annual strategy exercises combine suggestions from senior leaders and employees. Selected ideas become projects, often led by younger colleagues with senior mentors; execution follows defined measures and processes. This is an executive’s account of the organisation, rather than evidence that splitting a business caused its growth.
A clearer business boundary can also mean bringing related activities together. Bajaj Finance’s FY2026 annual report says the company brought its mortgage loans under a strategic business unit to develop mortgage expertise. It also describes credit-risk units for each business vertical, supported by specialist teams in areas including fraud control and risk analytics.
These arrangements illustrate a distinction between responsibility for a particular business and the controls that support it. A focused team can remain part of a wider organisation.
What the venture-building numbers show
An existing product getting its own team and a company creating a new revenue stream are different things. McKinsey’s global venture-building survey studies the latter. The consultancy questioned 715 senior managers and executives in 66 countries in May 2025, all at companies reporting at least $100 million in annual revenue. Its October 2025 report concerns new products, services or businesses creating new revenue streams, beyond incremental improvements.
Respondents at companies that had built at least three ventures in the previous five years reported a revenue-to-investment ratio of 1.9, compared with 1.3 for those that built one or two. McKinsey calculated each ratio by dividing weighted average venture revenue by weighted average investment required to reach cash-flow break-even.
That measure is not profit or a return paid to shareholders. The study is observational and self-reported; it does not establish that building more ventures caused better performance. Stronger companies may have more resources to build repeatedly. The sample also cannot tell a small Indian firm what to expect from its next launch.
Decide what the team will own
For a manufacturer starting an equipment-maintenance service, for example, the choices are concrete. Who decides prices, hires technicians and handles customer complaints? Which costs belong to the new service, and which factory, sales or technology resources will it share? Naming a manager alone does not settle these questions.
The initial plan can spell out which staff and systems the venture will borrow, how those costs will be recorded and who decides whether to continue funding it. That makes the organisational choice specific enough to review, rather than treating a new reporting line as the whole job.
These are illustrative design questions, not a model tested in the survey. They can be asked before a company chooses to separate an activity, combine related products or keep a small experiment within an existing team.
The Crunch
Building a new business requires an explicit agreement about responsibility, shared resources and the evidence for further investment. Bajaj’s account offers one organisational example; the useful next step is to define those arrangements for the venture actually being built.