Fintech company Affinity has appointed an artificial intelligence (AI) expert from a big tech firm as its Chief AI Officer (CAIO), moving to strengthen its AI service capabilities.
Affinity announced Monday that it has hired Debarya Dutta (pictured), formerly of Uber, as its Chief AI Officer. The company plans to build a comprehensive financial platform by strengthening finance-specific AI and accelerate the transition of its operating system to an AI-based framework.
Affinity has already translated its AI capabilities into business results in the Indian market, drawing on more than a decade of accumulated customer behavior data, its proprietary AI financial platform, and its Alternative Credit Scoring System (ACS). The company has recorded cumulative transaction volume of more than 3.2 trillion won to date, and in 2025 it posted revenue of 169.1 billion won and pre-tax profit of 39.7 billion won.
CAIO Debarya Dutta is an AI expert who studied AI at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), founded by the originator of machine learning, and at Cambridge University in the U.K. At Uber, he designed AI systems at global scale and translated AI into tangible business outcomes. At Affinity, he will oversee company-wide AI strategy and execution across customer service, credit scoring, personalization, and operational productivity, and expand the service area across the broader financial sector, including insurance and credit cards.
Affinity plans to embed AI throughout its financial services. It will design key decision-making areas around AI, including credit scoring, approval likelihood prediction, product recommendation, risk management, and real-time service delivery. The company also aims to create differentiation that competitors cannot easily replicate in the short term by building a finance-specific AI intelligence layer that combines its proprietary data with financial domain expertise.
"AI transformation is not about adopting new technology, but about redesigning decision-making structures and ways of working," Dutta said. "By adding global-level AI execution capabilities on top of the data and financial field experience Affinity has accumulated, we will build an AI financial infrastructure for the financially underserved, extending beyond India to global markets."
