In this episode of the CAIO Connect Podcast, host Sanjay Puri sits down with Dr. Debarag Banerjee, Chief AI & Data Officer at L&T Finance, to explore how AI is reshaping financial services. With a Stanford PhD, 15 patents, and leadership roles at Flipkart, Jio, Agoda, and Intel, Dr. Banerjee shares practical frameworks on building enterprise-scale AI. 

Highlights from this episode: 

• Why RODI (Return on Data Investment) is a must-have framework for the C-Suite. 
• How Cyclops, L&T Finance’s ML underwriting engine, processes loans in under 4 seconds. 
• Agentic AI adoption: where chatbots and underwriting converge. 
• Managing a multi-LLM strategy (OpenAI, Gemini, Llama, OSS models). 
• The talent war in AI: hiring beyond FAANG. 

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Resources Mentioned: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/debarag/ 

⏱️ Timestamps: 

0:00 Podcast Highlights & Introduction 

02:23 - 02:40 - I've been in the AI from way before it was cool. 

04:23.301 - 04:44 - the world's first generative AI-based fashion designs. This was way before GIGPD. 

09:12 - 10:41 - A hands-on boot camp for the C-suite and board. 

13:56 - 14:13 - The concept of "Return on Data Investment" (RODI). 

58:53 - 59:13 - a big part of what we call software engineering was actually a profession that we made a mistake creating. 

1:01:03 - 1:01:04 - Preference for "cautious" agents. 

1:01:36 - 1:01:38 - Gen.AI in production in "months, ideally weeks."