ServiceNow puts $40 million into Indian banking AI firm BusinessNext

Key points

• ServiceNow invested $40 million in BusinessNext in 2025, valuing the Indian firm at $700 million.
• BusinessNext serves more than 70 banks across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S., including the State Bank of India and HDFC Bank.
• The company posted roughly $32 million in revenue in its latest financial year, with about half coming from outside India.
• BusinessNext was last valued at $181 million in 2021, meaning its valuation has nearly quadrupled in four years.
• The deal gives BusinessNext access to ServiceNow's global sales network rather than just cash.

ServiceNow, the American software company best known for automating back-office tasks like IT helpdesks and HR request queues, has taken a roughly 5% stake in BusinessNext, a Noida-based firm that builds AI software for banks. The price: $40 million, at a valuation of $700 million.

For context, BusinessNext brought in around $32 million in revenue last year. That is a steep price-to-revenue multiple, which tells you ServiceNow is paying for future growth, not just today's numbers.

So what does BusinessNext actually do? Its platform manages the customer-facing side of banking, think loan applications, account opening, and client relationship workflows, using AI agents (software that can carry out multi-step tasks automatically without a human clicking through each step). Crucially, it keeps sensitive customer data on private, bank-controlled computing systems rather than shared cloud servers, which matters enormously to regulators.

ServiceNow's own software is stronger on the back-office side: routing internal requests, tracking IT problems, managing staff workflows. The two companies plan to bundle their products and sell them jointly to financial institutions that want to automate both halves of the operation.

Founder and CEO Nishant Singh told TechCrunch that the company chose ServiceNow over purely financial investors precisely because of that sales muscle. He described it as borrowing ServiceNow's go-to-market "machinery" in markets where BusinessNext has little presence yet. "Think of it as a strategic partnership, which is cemented with funding," Singh said.

What does this mean for bank customers?

For ordinary bank customers, the practical effect is more automation inside the institutions they use. Loan decisions, account queries, and compliance checks are the kinds of tasks BusinessNext's platform handles. Done well, that means faster responses. Done poorly, it means fewer humans to escalate to when something goes wrong.

BusinessNext was founded in 2002 and operated as CRMNext until it rebranded in 2022, rewriting its core software to put AI at the centre rather than bolting it on afterwards. It now employs more than 1,300 people and has raised over $60 million in total external funding from backers including Norwest Venture Partners and Avataar Ventures.

The deal lands at an awkward moment for traditional enterprise software vendors. Customers are increasingly asking whether they still need expensive legacy tools when newer AI-native alternatives exist. For ServiceNow, partnering with a specialist like BusinessNext is one answer to that pressure: go deeper in specific industries rather than try to do everything alone.