The digital world moves fast. Consumer expectations shift constantly, and technology keeps changing the way industries operate. In this environment, the leaders who truly stand out are the ones who know how to balance creativity with strategy and big-picture thinking with on-ground execution. They do not simply react to change but get ahead of it, taking complex challenges and turning them into brand stories that connect with real people across different cities, cultures, and generations. Nowhere is this more important than in fintech, where trust and simplicity are not just nice to have but absolutely essential. Building a platform that people not only use but actually believe in requires a very specific kind of leadership.
Shwetha Iyer, SVP and Head of Marketing at Kissht, India’s trusted credit platform with over 15 million customers, is one such leader. With nearly two decades of experience building brands across fintech, telecom, OTT, and D2C sectors, she has established herself as a respected name in the marketing world. Her work has earned her recognition as one of the top 40 under-40 marketers, and in 2025, she received the Fabulous Achievement in Marketing Excellence award at the World Women Leadership Congress.
A journey shaped by customer understanding
Shwetha Iyer’s journey into marketing was shaped less by traditional brand-building and more by a deeper curiosity about human behavior, decision-making, and trust. Early in her career, she was drawn to businesses where marketing had a direct influence on growth outcomes, rather than functioning as a standalone communication activity. This naturally led her toward digital-first and fintech environments, where every campaign, product experience, and customer interaction could be tracked and measured in real time.
What drew her to fintech was the realization that marketing in this space was no longer just about persuasion. It became closely tied to product design, underwriting behavior, retention, collections, trust-building, and customer education. In a category like lending, where consumers are making deeply personal and emotional financial decisions, the role of marketing goes well beyond customer acquisition.
Joining Kissht felt like the right move because the company was addressing a genuine structural gap in India, which was access to formal credit. There was a clear opportunity to build a brand that was not just focused on growth but also on institutional credibility. Over time, her role evolved into building a comprehensive marketing function that balances performance marketing, customer trust, regulatory sensitivity, storytelling, product adoption, and long-term brand equity.
The recent IPO was a particularly defining moment, as it represented not just the scale the platform had achieved but also the market’s confidence in the strength and sustainability of what the team had built.
Creating stability during industry challenges
One of the most challenging periods in Shwetha’s career was navigating the broader fintech reset, when regulatory scrutiny across the industry intensified, and consumer confidence in digital lending began to weaken. Many fintech brands at the time were built around aggressive growth, but the conversation quickly shifted toward governance, transparency, underwriting quality, and responsible customer engagement.
For marketers, this changed the playbook entirely.
“The challenge was not simply protecting brand perception, but rebuilding trust in the category itself while continuing to drive business growth.” Shwetha Iyer addresses. The focus had to move away from transactional messaging and shift toward long-term credibility, customer education, and responsible communication.
That period turned out to be a defining lesson in her career. “That phase taught me an important lesson: sustainable brands are built during periods of skepticism, not optimism.”
In fintech, she believes resilience comes from aligning marketing closely with institutional strength. When underwriting discipline, governance, collections behavior, and customer experience are all in good shape, marketing becomes far more authentic and easier to defend.
Balancing growth, trust, and responsibility
Fintech marketing works differently from traditional consumer marketing because the customer is not simply purchasing a product. They are entering a financial relationship that is built on trust, credibility, and long-term confidence.
In the lending space, every piece of communication carries both reputational and regulatory weight. Unlike conventional consumer marketing, the focus cannot be purely on virality or short-term conversion. Customer acquisition has to be aligned with underwriting quality, repayment behavior, and the long-term value each customer brings to the platform.
At Kissht, marketing is approached as a cross-functional growth engine rather than a standalone communication activity. The strategies are deeply integrated with underwriting intelligence, customer analytics, product behavior, and portfolio quality, ensuring that every marketing decision is grounded in a broader understanding of the business.
Changing the way people view credit
One of the most meaningful strategic shifts at Kissht was repositioning the brand from being seen purely as a transactional digital lender to a broader financial enabler focused on aspirations and long-term financial inclusion.
This thinking gave rise to the “Sapno Ko Kaho YES” campaign featuring Sachin Tendulkar. The objective was not simply to gain visibility through a celebrity association, but to fundamentally change the way consumers emotionally perceived credit. In India, borrowing has often been associated with hesitation or social stigma. The campaign aimed to reposition responsible credit as a tool for progress rather than a sign of financial distress.
The results were significant and reflected across multiple areas, including brand recall, customer trust metrics, app engagement, and acquisition efficiency. More importantly, the campaign helped strengthen Kissht’s positioning as a responsible, technology-led financial platform rather than just another short-term lending application.
Building trust through ethical marketing
For Shwetha Iyer, ethical marketing in fintech is non-negotiable. Financial trust, once broken, is extremely difficult to rebuild.
At Kissht, compliance and transparency are not treated as final checks before a campaign goes live. They are built into the marketing process from the very beginning. All communication frameworks are developed in close collaboration with legal, compliance, product, and risk teams, ensuring that every customer interaction is responsible, clear, and aligned with regulatory expectations.
A smarter approach to sustainable growth
One framework that Shwetha Iyer and her team focus on internally is what she calls “Responsible Growth Architecture.”
In fintech, she believes growth cannot be looked at in isolation from underwriting quality, customer trust, repayment behavior, and compliance discipline. Rather than optimizing marketing solely for customer acquisition cost or top-of-funnel scale, the team evaluates growth quality across the entire customer lifecycle.
Fintech’s shift toward responsible growth
Shwetha Iyer believes fintech marketing is entering a much more mature phase, both in India and globally.
The first shift she points to is trust. Consumers today are more informed about how financial products work, and regulators are holding brands to a much higher standard of accountability. In this environment, brands that communicate clearly and operate responsibly will have a stronger and more lasting advantage than those that simply chase growth.
The second shift is about reach. Fintech is no longer just an urban story. There is a growing opportunity to serve underserved MSMEs and consumers in smaller towns and cities across India. Products like digital LAP are particularly well placed here because they address a real and longstanding gap in access to formal credit, while also contributing to healthier portfolio quality for lenders.
Open letter to aspiring fintech marketers
Dear Fintech Marketers,
My core advice from nearly two decades in marketing: build sustainable brands during periods of skepticism, not optimism. In fintech, trust is everything—once broken, it’s extremely difficult to rebuild.
Don’t optimize solely for acquisition cost or short-term conversion. Instead, align marketing with underwriting quality, governance, and customer experience. When these foundations are strong, marketing becomes authentic and defensible.
Fintech is no longer just an urban story. Serving underserved MSMEs and consumers in smaller towns creates meaningful inclusion while driving healthier portfolios.
Compliance and transparency shouldn’t be final checks before campaigns go live. Build them into your marketing process from the beginning, collaborating closely with legal, compliance, product, and risk teams.
The category has shifted from aggressive growth to responsible engagement. Brands that communicate clearly and operate responsibly will have a lasting advantage.
Remember: you’re not just selling a product. You’re building a financial relationship grounded in trust.
Warm regards,
Shwetha Iyer
SVP and Head of Marketing
Kissht
5 key takeaways from Shwetha Iyer’s approach to building trust in fintech
- Trust matters more than fast growth. Long-term success in fintech comes from transparency, responsible communication, and customer confidence.
- Marketing should support the entire business. Strong fintech marketing works closely with underwriting, compliance, analytics, and customer experience.
- Responsible credit can change lives. Repositioning credit as a tool for progress helped create a stronger emotional connection with customers.
- Ethical marketing builds lasting brands. Clear communication and compliance-focused campaigns help strengthen credibility in financial services.
- Sustainable growth comes from discipline. Growth should be measured not just by acquisition numbers, but by customer quality, trust, and long-term value.
