Mumbai, Maharashtra, India (NewsVoir) L&T Finance Ltd. (LTF), one of the leading Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) in the country, announced the launch of the ‘LTF Pearl Anniversary Challenge,’ a hackathon focused on developing innovative models to enhance credit assessments for farmers across India. The challenge aims to leverage data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better predict farmer incomes, enabling fairer and more accessible lending practices.

The challenge invites AI and data science professionals or students to create models using a rich dataset encompassing weather monitoring, soil quality data, crop yield information, commodity price dynamics, land records, and other relevant information. The initiative’s mission is to drive innovation in LTF's credit assessment by building upon the existing advanced statistical, machine learning, and Generative AI techniques, ultimately empowering the farming community.

Mr. Sudipta Roy, Managing Director & CEO at LTF, said, “We are committed to broadening financial inclusion, especially for the underserved farming population of the country. Farmers often face challenges in accessing credit at fair prices due to limited credit tracks, making them vulnerable to predatory lending. As a leading tractor financier in the country, LTF employs state-of-the-art models that leverage statistical and machine learning models to assess the creditworthiness of our farmers. However, we believe that with significant technological advancements taking place across the world, there’s always room for more enhancements. The ‘LTF Pearl Anniversary Challenge,’ which was unveiled at RAISE’ 24, a premier AI event in the BFSI sector, is a call to the data science community to take up an interesting challenge of unlocking the full potential of our data assets and developing cutting-edge solutions that open doors of credit for deserving farmers across the country. We encourage participants to explore and integrate alternative public or private data sources to further enhance their models.” Dr. Debarag Banerjee, Chief AI and Data Officer at LTF, said, “Through the 'LTF Pearl Anniversary Challenge,' we are inviting the brightest minds to collaborate on a real-world use case to develop practical and impactful innovative models that will bring tangible social impact to the farmer community at large. This is a rare opportunity for AI and data science professionals or students to actively shape the future of farmer finance by working alongside LTF to make a real difference.” LTF is seeking innovative economic models to transform farmer credit scoring. The Company is providing access to its data and is encouraging the use of alternative data sources to eliminate unwarranted loan rejections for deserving farmers.

The winning solution will be evaluated based on the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of predicted farmer income on unseen data. The top performing teams and individuals will be awarded Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals, along with cash prizes, details of which are available on the Pearl Challenge website.

In addition to monetary prizes, winners may also be offered job opportunities at LTF and will have the chance to contribute to impactful financial solutions within the agricultural sector. Participants can form teams to collaborate on their submissions. There is no fee to enter the competition.

Team registration closes on April 14, 2025, followed by the solution submission deadline on May 14, 2025. The winners will be announced on August 1, 2025.

Register now at: www.ltfraise.com/PearlChallenge For queries, please contact: [email protected] About L&T Finance Ltd (LTF) L&T Finance Ltd. (LTF) (https://www.ltfs.com), formerly known as L&T Finance Holdings Ltd., (LTFH) is a leading Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC), offering a range of financial products and services. Headquartered in Mumbai, the Company has been rated ‘AAA’ - the highest credit rating for NBFCs - by four leading rating agencies. It has also received leadership scores and ratings by global and national Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating providers for its sustainability performance. The Company has been certified as a Great Place To Work® and has also won many prestigious awards for its flagship CSR project - “Digital Sakhi”- which focuses on women's empowerment and digital and financial inclusion. Under Right to Win, being in the ‘right businesses’ has helped the Company become one of the leading financiers in key Retail products. The Company is focused on creating a top-class, digitally enabled, Retail finance company as part of the Lakshya 2026 plan. The goal is to move the emphasis from product focus to customer focus and establish a robust Retail portfolio with quality assets, thus creating a Fintech@Scale while keeping ESG at the core. Fintech@Scale is one of the pillars of the Company’s strategic roadmap - Lakshya 2026. The Company has around 2.5 Crore customer database, which is being leveraged to cross-sell, up-sell, and identify new customers.

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