How Ambani Will Use Finance to Tighten DNA Loop

One answer is financial services. People will always need credit. Whether they deserve it — and how much — is either left to traditional credit-scoring models, which tend to exclude a broad swathe of the unbanked population. Or, as it has been demonstrated by Ant Group Co. in China and MercadoLibre Inc. in Argentina, creditworthiness may also be gleaned from buyers’ and sellers’ transactions data on large online platforms. That’s where Ambani wants to go next — to a “consumer and merchant lending business based on proprietary data analytics to complement and supplement the traditional credit bureau-based underwriting,” his flagship Reliance Industries Ltd. said in a Friday press release. 

A successful fintech loans platform draws upon what the Bank for International Settlements calls a self-reinforcing “DNA loop,” shorthand for data, network…