How Navi is sharpening its IPO pitch ahead of a fresh FY27 filing

“The story is really coming together. We have a well-oiled acquisition engine that is acquiring customers at low cost, and revenue from our various businesses, as well as bill payments and other smaller revenue pools, is starting to increase. We’re building a profitable enterprise and that’s a story we feel confident taking to the public market,” Naresh told Mint in an interview.

The company wants to approach investors with a broader story built around payments, lending, insurance and investments, rather than as a pure payments player at a time when fintechs are under pressure to show clearer monetization and earnings visibility.

Navi earlier attempted to raise up to ₹3,350 crore through a public issue. The company filed a draft red herring prospectus in March 2022 but later shelved the listing due to market volatility. Now, it is trying again with a sharper emphasis on profitability and a more diversified business mix.

Naresh said Navi’s January-March quarter was its strongest yet on a consolidated basis, with lending remaining the main revenue driver and smaller payment-linked pools such as bill payments also starting to contribute more meaningfully.

Navi’s push towards profitability comes after a volatile financial showing over the past two years. The company swung to a net loss of ₹126.4 crore in FY25 from a net profit of ₹358.6 crore in FY24, according to its filings. The FY24 profit, however, was flattered by a one-time gain linked to the sale of Chaitanya India Fin Credit Pvt. Ltd., a former subsidiary of Navi Finserv.

Revenue, cash

Navi reported revenue of ₹2,689.1 crore in FY25, compared with ₹2,793.7 crore in FY24, while total expenses rose to ₹2,730.2 crore from ₹2,490.6 crore, the company’s filings showed. Cash and cash equivalents stood at about ₹552.4 crore at the end of FY25, down from ₹599.1 crore at the end of FY24.

Navi’s product stack today spans Unified Payments Interface (UPI), utility transactions such as bill pay and recharges, credit-on-UPI through RuPay card linkage and Trezo, its pay-later offering built with banking partners. Alongside, it offers cash loans and home loans, sells insurance products and houses mutual fund offerings under Navi AMC.

At the time of Navi’s 2022 filing, lending was the group’s largest business, with personal, housing and other loans contributing the biggest share of income. Naresh confirmed that lending is still the main revenue driver even as Navi broadens into payments, insurance and asset management.

For Navi, UPI is not a meaningful standalone revenue business so much as the starting point of a wider customer relationship. With person-to-merchant UPI payments still operating in a zero-merchant discount rate environment, Naresh said the company is using the product as a low-cost acquisition and engagement engine, while leaning on rewards, bill payments and credit-on-UPI to improve retention and create monetization opportunities around the payments base.

Naresh said Navi’s larger bet is that UPI will become a meaningful rail for distributing credit, through both linked RuPay credit cards and through Trezo, its bank-partner-led credit line product. He said linking credit to UPI does more than shift small-ticket spends online: it increases usage, raises ticket sizes and gives lenders better visibility into how customers are using credit inside a payments ecosystem.

UPI credit

“Linking credit to UPI also increases utilization, it increases spend, it increases average ticket size. So, UPI turbocharges the credit product,” Naresh said. He added that the credit line on UPI is still at an early stage, but Navi has seen a strong customer response, with utilization on its tested product crossing 95%, reinforcing its view that this could become a mass-market way to deliver formal credit.

Navi is the fourth-largest UPI app by transaction volume, with about a 3.5% market share in March 2026, behind PhonePe at 46.4%, Google Pay at 33.3% and Paytm at 7.8%. Newcomers such as super.money and POP are trying to carve out a space in the smaller end of the market.

Navi’s lending push comes after regulatory disruption last year. In October 2024, the Reserve Bank of India barred Navi from sanctioning and disbursing loans, citing supervisory concerns around excessive pricing, unfair and hidden charges, and the risk of borrowers being pushed beyond their repayment capacity. The restrictions were lifted on 2 December 2024 after the RBI said the company had adopted revamped processes and systems and committed to ongoing compliance, especially on fairness in loan pricing.

“We’re not a small-ticket, unsecured, or cash loan provider. That’s not the area that we intend to operate as more than 75% of our customers have bank-like prime CIBIL scores, and our average disbursal size has been rising,” Naresh added.

Tapping debt

Navi has raised about $445 million in equity so far and has tapped the debt markets to support growth. Most recently, Navi raised ₹170 crore through a private placement of debentures in July 2025 from institutional and private investors as it looked to shore up capital for credit-led businesses.

Naresh said debt would continue to matter for high-capital businesses such as home loans and personal loans, even as the company works towards an IPO.

“The next step right now in our mind is obviously a public fundraise,” he said, adding that Navi would manage its capital needs along the way.

Salman SH

Salman S.H. is an Assistant Editor with Mint in Bengaluru, where he covers startups, venture capital, and the broader internet economy. Over the course of more than a decade in journalism and strategic communications, he has built deep reporting expertise across technology, fintech, consumer internet, digital platforms, and the business models shaping India’s new economy. At Mint, he tracks the companies, investors, and policy developments influencing how technology is built, funded, and scaled in India.His reporting covers venture capital, startup strategy, fintech, edtech, funding trends, and the internet economy. He writes about how startups raise money, grow their businesses, respond to regulation, and adapt to changes in technology and policy. His work also looks at the impact of policy decisions on startups and investors, and tracks the sectors, founders, and firms shaping India’s digital economy.Before Mint, Salman worked across several respected newsrooms, including The Economic Times, Financial Express, The Ken, Inc42, and The Core. He has also worked in strategic communications, leading PR strategy and media outreach for clients in education, online learning, consumer internet, and consulting. That combination of newsroom and communications experience gives him a clear understanding of how business stories are reported, shaped, and understood.