BASIC positions Hom-i’s advice as neutral even though the company earns from lending partners. How does BASIC protect the platform’s recommendations from commercial bias, and what safeguards make sure borrowers see the best-fit lender rather than the most profitable one for BASIC?
The starting point is that the borrower should not have to navigate a single-lender ecosystem. HOM-i compares eligibility and loan offers across 100+ lenders, rather than recommending a product from one lender. The recommendation is driven by the borrower’s profile, eligibility, property, loan requirement and preferences.
We have also separated the roles of technology, advisors and the borrower. AI does the research and comparison; our advisors interpret the options and negotiate where required. The final choice is with the borrower. For our advisory service we charge zero advisory fee and we are transparent in making the comparison so that the customer is able to understand the options available before he makes a decision.
Home loan eligibility often depends on documents and income patterns that are hard to read automatically, especially for self-employed borrowers. How is Hom-i using AI for document analysis, eligibility assessment and lender matching, and what accuracy gains has BASIC seen in approval rates or turnaround times?
Home loans are more complex than many other forms of lending because the decision involves not just the borrower, but also the property, documentation, credit history and the policies of individual lenders.
HOM-i is designed to bring those different inputs together. It uses generative AI and machine learning to analyse borrower and property information, conduct credit checks, understand eligibility across lenders and identify suitable lender matches. It has been trained on more than 6 lakh call transcripts and 2 million minutes of advisor conversations, giving it a large base of real-world interactions to learn from.
For self-employed and non-standard income profiles, this is particularly useful because the objective is not simply to apply one rule to everyone. HOM-i can assess the profile against the eligibility criteria of multiple lenders and identify where there is a better fit.
Where securing a loan offer could otherwise take weeks, HOM-i can help borrowers receive a loan offer within a few minutes.
Homfinity focuses on underserved and informal-income borrowers who are often turned away by traditional lenders. What are the biggest barriers these borrowers face today, and how is Homfinity designed to remove them?
The problem is often not that the borrower has no income. It is that the income is difficult to document in the format traditional underwriting systems expect.
Informal-income borrowers, small business owners and families in Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations can face three recurring barriers: limited formal documentation, smaller-ticket loans and a lack of access to lenders willing to understand their profile. Homfinity was established specifically to serve this segment, including lower-income borrowers, people with informal income and borrowers in remote locations.
The answer is to reduce the dependence on a purely paper-heavy process. Homfinity combines AI-powered onboarding, a paper-light journey and human assistance. Its model brings technology and advisors together so that borrowers can get help with documentation, lender selection and follow-ups rather than being left to navigate the process alone.
The larger goal is housing inclusion: making formal home finance accessible to borrowers who may have been excluded because their financial lives don’t fit a standard salaried template.
Borrowers share sensitive income, identity and property data during the loan journey. How has BASIC built data privacy and DPDP compliance into Hom-i, particularly when that data moves between the platform, advisors and 150+ lending partners?
For us, data privacy has to be built into the loan journey, not treated as a compliance exercise at the end.
On HOM-i, we obtain OTP-based consent from customers, with their consent to our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions obtained before the OTP is sent.
The Privacy Policy specifies that borrower information is used only for the purposes agreed to by the customer. These include identity verification, collecting officially valid documents where required, and sharing relevant information with authorised parties, including banks, NBFCs, credit information companies and service providers, when needed to facilitate the loan journey.
When data moves from HOM-i to our lending partners, it is shared only as required for the loan process. Each lending partner then handles the information it receives under its own terms and privacy policy. We also retain customer information in line with our data retention policy.
Our approach is to ensure that customers provide consent upfront, their information is used for defined purposes, and data is shared with relevant parties only as needed to facilitate the loan journey.
Gen Z borrowers bring different expectations, from instant digital journeys to transparent pricing and smaller ticket sizes. How is BASIC adapting its products, communication and advisory model to serve this new generation of homebuyers?
The next generation of homebuyers is much more comfortable starting digitally. They expect to compare options, understand the numbers and get an answer without making multiple branch visits.
That is why we are building a journey where AI handles the research and comparison, while human advisors remain available when judgement or intervention is required. Hom-i can compare 100+ lenders, assess eligibility and help identify the most suitable options, while the borrower remains in control of the final choice.
The same principle applies to communication. Housing finance has traditionally been full of jargon, paperwork and uncertainty. Younger borrowers expect transparency around interest rates, charges, eligibility and the overall cost of borrowing.
At the same time, digital-first should not mean digital-only. A home is one of the largest financial decisions most people make. There will always be situations where a borrower wants a person to explain a document, resolve an issue or help them make sense of competing offers.
Our approach is therefore AI for speed and comparison, human expertise for judgement, and the borrower in control of the decision. That combination is what we believe will make home financing more relevant to the next generation of Indian homebuyers.
