MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) has been a significant contributor to India's GDP, manufacturing output, and exports. However, despite this huge impact of MSMEs on the Indian Economy, the sector is always crippled by the lack of access to credit. Analytics India Magazine spoke with Abhishek Singh, the Chief Analytics Officer at Lendingkart, to understand how the company is leveraging machine learning algorithms with digital data to develop alternative underwriting mechanisms for the MSME sector. "As the majority of businesses in this segment are from the unorganised sector, barely possessing any recorded financial history, they have to resort to informal sources to address their financial requirements suited to their business model. As a result, they end up paying higher rates on loans borrowed, clogging their business growth, and even keep high collateral for these loans," said Singh.

"AI is the new electricity." When Andrew Ng speaks, you drop everything and pay attention. That's what I (and thousands of others) did when Andrew Ng compared our age of AI to the discovery of electricity. We are truly living in the age of artificial intelligence. Companies are spending billions of Dollars just to stay relevant in today's ever-changing environment.