AI at L&T Finance: Dr. Debarag Banerjee on C-Suite Alignment, Agentic AI, and the Talent War

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.

👉 Subscribe to CAIO Connect for more conversations with global Chief AI Officers.

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." ...