BW People in the conversation with Raj N Phani, Founder, Zaggle sharing the observing about the transition happening towards FinTech companies and how are they supporting their employees during this pandemic.

Why so many banks are partnering with FinTech companies?

Digitization has fundamentally transformed every industry and the banking sector is no different. Banks are increasingly partnering with Fintech companies because of the advanced disruptive solutions provided to them. While traditionally, banking software’s have been used for operations such as managing customer databases, executing transactions, and handling accounts, today, with the changing advancement in technologies, they are looking to use this to their advantage.

Banks amalgamate with FinTechs for hyper-personalized products which meet customers’ evolving expectations. It is a win-win situation for FinTechs as well as they are able to leverage the larger database of banks, understand the need gap and innovate swiftly. Fintechs are more agile and are able to bring and invent new products at a faster pace. 

As far as Zaggle is concerned, banking services are partnering with for issuance of the cards and bundling services while also selling our expense management platform to their customers for better banking experience. We are a ready solution working with banks to create a robust platform for open banking. We currently work three banks RBL Bank, IndusInd and YES Bank and work closely with VISA, RuPay and MasterCard Networks to craft these solutions and to constantly innovate to bring value to our users.

How Zaggle is bringing HR and Finance together?

This question can be answered in an interesting anecdote, an employee of an MNC approached his HR Head with 35 t-shirts in his hand from events that took place over two odd years. He explained how those t-shirts were a waste for him because he wouldn’t wear them. That’s when the company realised, they needed digital rewards for their employees to benefit from it.

We are a Payments company working in the areas of Financial Tech, HR Tech and Bank Tech. The most amazing part of HR Tech is that it deals with People and mapping AI to HI has been one of the most challenging tasks we had. HR tech space has been waiting to be disrupted and rise above the basic Payroll, L&D, Appraisals to a fundamentally altering level of making a difference to the Human Resource. We found our sweet spot in work force performance management, the modelling we did using predictive analysis (AI) as to what could be the career growth of an individual post he joining the company is being appreciated by lot of our beta clients and we hope to soon release it in the main phase. Security is hygiene and without that no company would want to even look at your tool.

Our systems are driven by AI because having a fool proof system and convenience is cumbersome which makes it difficult to use. Hence AI marries the two, building security and certainty as well as provides convenience. The other financial players don’t look at the HR tech space as you need domain expertise and ability to show value creation to the client.

What trends are you observing in the fintech industry?

Finance and Technology are in a firm collision creating the perfect synergies and disruption. With evolving technology, financial services are open-heartedly adapting to the new technology to enhance user and business experience.

Though there is a huge technological gap when it comes to businesses adopting new technology trends like blockchain technology, AI, BaaS, Digital-only banking, fintech-based financial inclusion and how it’s set to impact the industry. There’s no doubt that these new concepts are the need of the hour and are massively changing the way businesses handle transactions.

We see a world where every company is embracing new fintech products that offer all banking services and tons of additional features that Banks cannot and should not imagine. With banking data and services opening up, fintech players would come with so many innovative and disruptive ideas by combining AI/Blockchain along with massive banking data that we cannot imagine any business or even individuals going to Physical Banks anymore in future.

Financial regulatory frameworks appear to be adapting to new technologies globally. That new innovations are set to have such a major impact on retail banking in the next few years suggests that regulators have come to a point where they can allow these technologies to flourish. Also, a lot of banks will be using services provided by fintech to reduce NPA’s leading to credit recovery which will be the new norm from hereon.

As per recet reports, the banking industry is forecasted to spend more than $20 Bn on public cloud services in 2019, which indicates the significant inroads it has made into the industry.

In this pandemic, everything is shifting to online and digital platforms. Do you find it somehow favourable for Zaggle?

Zaggle has been growing exponentially and has Doubled its Turnover and Revenues compared to last year. The company has had a turnover of INR 1800 Cr in FY 2018-19 and aims to target INR 2400 - 3500 Cr in FY 2019-2020. Yes, this time is definitely favourable for us as we have been winning new client contracts in spite of the sales teams and clients working from home because companies have now realized how important is it to quickly digitize processes to save cost and be Efficient.

Since the digital adoption will be the new mantra for most of the companies, we are looking at 100% growth in business in the next upcoming 9 to 12 months. We have bagged 5 new contracts in the last two weeks and have been on a winning spree despite the economy being shaken up with the current COVID-19 situation.

We have seen growth in the virtual card business by 500%. Zaggle being the Largest Prepaid Cards Issuers for RuPay and serving more than 3500 Corporates with 3.5 million users, is seeing the acceptance of Virtual cards by its users.

We really don’t have to get into delivery during COVID-19 as these cards are sent directly to the recipient’s email id as a password protected file which is secure and have less issue of losing or getting misplaced. These cards can be used to transact across online ecommerce portals and for multiple purchases.

What steps are you taking for employees in this current scenario? 

We at Zaggle had initiated work from home, pretty early to reduce exposure of our employees to the outside and curb travelling. We have sorted to digital methods to conduct our meetings and ensured all hygiene and sanitation measures were taken in the office premises at the beginning. As a goodwill gesture, we had announced COVID 19 bonus for the employees wherein Rs. 10,000 bonus was loaded on to each employees’ zinger card to manage the day-to-day essentials like groceries, masks, sanitizers, private transport etc. We are very well prepared and have set the systems in place.

We are getting the required output even in this tough time with Work from Home of Zaggle Employees as everyone has been working dedicatedly. The team leaders are in touch with Team members to get the work delivered. Attendance has been marked digitally and we believe it's great to have such kind of commitment from team members during such tough times.

With the availability of advance digital and video tools, we had planned well in advance including mock drills to test the work from home capabilities and have successfully implemented the same for Business Continuity. We are ensuring all distributed teams can still reliably meet face to face digitally since all employees are not in the same location. While making use of tools enabling remote working, cybersecurity is on top of our mind.