KV Kamath reveals his favourite app to Kunal Shah. And it's not CRED.

Speaking at the Moneycontrol Fintech Conclave, a veteran leader of India's financial services industry K.V. Kamath offered a candid assessment of India's fintech landscape.

"My favourite app is Swiggy," Kamath revealed during a conversation with CRED founder Kunal Shah.

In an insightful take on how users think, Kamath shared that he likes an app that "keeps pace" with him, emphasizing the importance of seamless experiences in user interface and design. Kamath also shared that he hasn't been to a store in years and he does all his shopping including groceries, online.

Yet, behind the praise for India's vibrant app ecosystem lay a more sober warning about the industry's future direction. Kamath says fintech startups must adopt more sustainable practices, avoid over-hiring, and shift focus from consumer internet models to broader technological innovation.

Kamath expressed concern that many fintech companies have become too comfortable with "burning money without understanding when to stop." He argued that despite healthy growth in recent years, these ventures often fail to identify a sustainable endpoint for their high-cost, expansion-oriented strategies.

The industry veteran also highlighted a broader structural problem: rampant over hiring of engineers without a corresponding emphasis on essential business acumen. "They need to understand business too," he stressed, noting that technical prowess alone is not sufficient to ensure long-term success in the evolving fintech market.

Drawing international comparisons, Kamath pointed out the stark disparity between India and China in terms of technology’s contribution to GDP.

While tech fuels 35% of China’s growth, India currently lags at less than 5%. This gap, Kamath explained, stems from the differing stages of maturity within each nation’s technology ecosystem.

India’s older software service companies have laid a solid foundation, but future growth, he insisted, must come from a new generation of startups—those capable of moving beyond mere consumer internet offerings.