very good morning to you all. Uh, you know, folks gathered around here for this discussion. Um, as I was reflecting, uh, I actually, uh I'm very I'm I'm a I'm a knowledge worker. I'm very bad at this opening statement. So I did go to chat GP T to construct something, uh, which I thought it should be funny as well. And it came up with some ridiculous stuff around a joke around going to an ATM and getting our 404 cash not found cash not available as to cash not found. Uh, so I just dispense with that, and, uh, I I was I was just sort of thinking through as to, you know, Are we real? I mean, we are undeniably living in a very exciting time. Now, this is such a cliche. Um, simply because, you know, I started working from, uh, 1989 as a developer, right? And I've been predominantly in the banking, financial services space, and I have never experienced there's not been a single year from there on until now, where this feeling hasn't been there. I think every year it just feels like we are living in an undeniably remarkable time, right? And and that's simply because banks have taken to technology like fish to water. And banking thrives on technology as a backbone. Right. Uh, we've seen a massive evolution. And, uh, today, instead of talking, reminiscing about the past, I want to sort of set a theme where we want to look at. What will it take for us to navigate from here into the future? Right. Uh, we're all I mean, uh, everything comes with a certain set of challenges and opportunities, uh, having built a business, having built tech to bring us still here. Uh, how difficult is it to start reshaping what you have to address the challenges of the future? Uh, so we have I think we could not get better set of people, uh, you know, India's largest private bank and India's SME focused bank, right? Who are at the cutting edge of tech to to speak about this topic. So I want to set a baseline. Uh, so my first question and and Ra Ramesh, we could just start with you and then move forward. So I think my first question would be what sort of challenges and opportunities you see for your business from the current vantage point. And then from there on, we could just move into you know how to how to address them with tech. Yeah, thanks. Uh, thank you. I think, uh, it also goes back to the last earlier sessions. If you look at it, the problems across the banking industry or the challenges are the same. Right? Uh, it is basically today, if you ask me, uh, the challenge of digital distribution. Uh, the the nimbleness with the banks can and can can act on technology, and they're harnessing some of the future technology. I think if you if you look at it and that's a challenge because I also think there will be regulatory angles, compliance angles when you adopt the future technology that banks have to do a little bit of a balancing act. So if you see these three boxes, it's very important to understand that number one the digital distribution is going to be a very, very challenging time. As we go deeper into the into the hinterland, we look at technology very differently. I always say this in many of the forums that we are so enamoured by the by the UIU that we do on the on the metro science gen Z You know, it's very funky looking 11 touch experience. But nobody talks about an app being as Multilingual as it can get when it comes to rural experience or as simple that it can get a WhatsApp. For example, today there are hardly five clicks here. But you know so many I mean more than you know. What about 50 60 people use that right? So I think the banks have a challenge to understand from a technology angle in a digital angle. How do I kind of make assets that make sense to each of these segments rather than having one technology approach, which I think we've we're coming out of it. We're doing it rapidly. But I think there is still some more work and that will that will set the digital distribution, Uh, you know, game nicely up, and I see it's a very, very, very, uh, there is a lot of science behind it. It's not just talking about it. Right Second, Like I said, the competition from Fintech will continue to be there. It's a challenge because what I see is the Like I said, the agility. Uh, it's not going away. But I think it's far more balanced compared to the last two years, because banks are learning to become more technologically, technologically agile, while fintech are learning to be more regulated. So it it it's, I think the balance will play out in maybe in a couple of more years, and you will see an equilibrium there some banks will adopt, given the regulatory structure and the compliance structure still to be far agile. And there will be, uh, Fintech, who will come into a regulatory fold and still be able to deliver something. That's the That's the, uh, uh, a large level. I think these are the two large and the third, like the unknown of the technology. I mean, I do see a lot of, uh uh, talk around a I you know, uh and then, of course, quantum computing is lurking in the corner. I do see that as a as as a technology that's that's going to disrupt. How do we as bankers adopt first? And I think Shanti alluded to that in the earlier time. The focus is moving from buying technology banks have been very guilty of buying technology. I'll be very honest about it. You know, every every bank. I mean, you know, it's it's it's not a It's not a comment on any particular bank. I think the shift to being a technology developer or a technology maker is very critical. I think that, to my mind, is a very subtle area. You, of course, you can't develop everything. You don't want to develop Treasury systems. You don't want to do you know HR Systems, but you know, places where you need to really be nimble. Whether it's mobile applications, payment applications, you will need to think very differently on harnessing New Age technologies. Uh, and I think that's where I think some adoption of those technologies and bringing them into the into the technology platform and enable clients would be the third challenge. So those those are three challenges that I see, uh, from a bank perspective. Thank you. And thank you for having me here. I much appreciate it. I think I completely agree with, uh, Ramesh in terms of his, uh what? His articulation in terms of some of the key technology challenges and the way we look at it, I, I would only say that today. What is happening is the rapid the expectations on the front end. Whether it is an individual or a corporate is pretty much to say that. How do I create an instant gratification capability? Uh, whether you do it on the retail side, whether you do it on the liability of the asset side of the corporate side across each of the services. Uh, there is an expectation that you deliver, uh, capability services pretty much instant. And you also infuse it with the right amount of decision making capabilities. Because you don't do it. There is competition across there who is able to get that faster. Uh, so I think the the bigger I would say the challenges, uh, is to in terms of enabling and sort of prioritising, I would say prioritising, what do you really need to do? And what are the top 10 things that will make a change for the bank in its growth cycle? We can't be everywhere, and everyone can't be a banker to everyone, and we cannot be across the spectrum because then you will probably be not necessarily disrupting it So you really need to From a from a business and tech perspective, One of the key things. We sit down always, and it is like a a collaborative approach that we try to take. Uh, is that what is it that you really want to do? That will change an experience, Uh, which means better service, better availability of data, right levels of security and ensuring the right levels of risk coverage. And last, but not the least, is in terms of ensuring compliance. So when you look at all of these aspects, you know, there is always going to be How do you manage challenge vis a vis your expectations vis a vis what we can deliver? This traing is a constant I would say evolution. And when we look at this, it's about how we incrementally deliver incrementally deliver to those prioritised and make it work. So challenges, I would say, is across the board, because technology is also changing at pace and business expectations are also evolving. Uh, so to be able to make see through all of that and funnel it to your possibly the key ones, which is going to give you bang for the buck always, uh, is going to be critical, and that's something which it is not easy, but it is an involved conversation that helps us. I think that's something that everyone has to practise. Otherwise, you just throw a lot of money at it. And the outcomes may not be viable enough for any business so much. One of the things that you've done really very well, right, if I remember, is your API banking. Right. So you had constructed solutions specifically for e-commerce vendors around refunds and returns. And you had this entire API banking carved out as a unit, which was almost like a service. Right? Uh, when you when you constructed this. I mean, given the fact and all the fact that, you know, banking has typically always bought technology. Now, on top of a bot technology, uh, you know, cos kind of a layer, which which is very rigid, uh, which has been designed for a very different era. Just talk us through some of the, uh, you know, challenges and how you negotiated them as you went into, uh, the API banking for it. So the way I look at it, I'm gonna just um, with with a focus on, you know, let's just talk about the tech and you know, the kind of challenges as an organisation and learning. I mean, if there are so basically when we when the bank started off in this journey of being a digital front end, especially in the payments processing right, because with everything that it centred itself around is how do I go larger to the larger ecosystem and bring them into the fold from a payment processing perspective. Now, if you had to do it, the ask was, how do I do it at a very fraction of a second? And how do I drive scale, Uh, and what does that do enable for the bank? It gives you the car balances at the end of the day, and it gives you low cost funds for you to for the banking perspective. And there is also downstream capabilities in terms of understanding the data that you can probably cross utilise down the line. So these were high level imperatives. As a bank, I think it was very important, and we've done that very well. Is in terms of carving out an entire end to end team. Uh, in terms of saying, the only mission is, how do we scale this business? The tech stack. Now you could name it. You can get it. I don't think the commoditization of the text stack exists, but what is important, I think we go where we put a lot of effort and energy towards. It is in terms of defining the what is what needs to be built on top, which will be available as a a cookie cutter approach, a sandbox based approach to bring on board, uh, partners at a very short pace. Two. How do you drive scale? Because when you allow, say, for NEFT payments or settlement payments or you have I MP S at a large scale at about, say, 900 to 1000 TPS transactions per second. It is about how you design the architecture first. That's very important because you can't once you start rapid scale. You can't keep no unravelling mysteries around that, because that doesn't help. You can't keep doing stenting process. Every now and then you have to be careful about it. So there was a lot of focus on design, a lot of focus around terms of what you build on top of a base applicate platform that you got a use the word platform, not an application, a platform, which is the gateway and the enterprise service bus that you got on the back of it. You then say, what are those capabilities in terms of API, S and micro services that you really start to build And how do you present it to the partners for them to get on board it fast and last, but not the least. I think it's very important for us to understand this. Don't let it be a tech solution. Make it a product. Uh, because that product journey is what makes the change. Because then you end up creating a solution around what it is and say, How do I How do we as a bank enable the partner to understand the problem and give it as a solution to them? Uh, which means whether you process the payment and give them the settlement instruction with an instant and how do we help them there? A lot of the partners that we process payments essentially expect that, uh, we run through the night at very high transactions per second. So in the morning, the merchants have the money. Why is that? It's because we understood the problem to be able to solve for it and build that ecosystem to support it. So technology, enabling to understand the customer's problem statements and being able to build those right kind of service layers around the APIs and more importantly, provide that intuitive front end, is what has helped. And that's true for anything. The API banking when you dedicate an entire game plan to it, make it a product organisation and then drive the outcomes, uh, has helped us reach some good scale. I think that's what I would say. And that's the results of that to see where we are. Probably pretty much on the high, uh, in terms of top one and two in in terms of any EFP or RG and IP processing, I think are acquiring us over 90 95% of our entire volume base, which is where we are, because that's why we focused our attention towards it. So Ramesh, uh, continuing the same topic right on the architecture side, uh, I mean, from a purity of architecture perspective, headless is a way to go right when it comes to core systems. But the core systems are not built to be headless for a bank of your size and scale and innovating at the pace at which you do, you are forced to, you know, sort of go that route right, rather than purely from a purity of, uh, just I mean, how does this journey look like? Because at one end, you would have intermittent solutions coming in which themselves become an alternate stack and looking forward, going ahead where you are very clear that, you know, headless is the way to go. You need to have services around. We need to be able to have services at a granular level taken off, you know, hollowing the core. If I use your term, Right. Uh, how do you think through this process? Because A, it's a very disruptive thought process. You you have a bank to run, so just want to understand your thinking around the approach, right? How do you approach this? I think, uh, that's a great question, because that's also very close to the the kind of experiences that my bank has gone through over a few years. right. Um, see, what? What is the fundamental problem you want us to understand? You know, you always keep them. Why does it take so much difficulty for a bank to run? Uh, you know, its systems without any kind of, you know, uh, breakdowns, right? It's a very simple question. I mean, you keep hearing, uh, you know, a lot of tweets. A lot of, uh, you know, social media comments. You know, you must understand the basic definition of fintech in the bank. See, Finally, the transaction always hits the bank, and the bank has to commit the transaction. The final right always comes to the bank just to kind of make it very simple. You can do any digital ecosystem. It all comes back to one database, and that database has to be their standing. And, you know, and what has happened is very interesting. Pre 2015 banks were buying platforms, and these platforms are built on a particular architecture, which I call as monolithic architecture. So it's a bit like every transaction keeps coming and hitting a particular database. All of us, OK, suddenly imagine this is like a dam, you know, which is which is full of water and one full day, five day the dam bursts. It's exactly the same thing that happened with the UP, a movement right suddenly from a TPS of less than a TPS to 80 100 PSU is 2500 TPS in a short span of 4 to 5 years and all the transactions. If it's a Treasury guy doing a billion dollar payment or there's a ₹5 debit coming, it finally comes to one core bank. So it's a great wipe. Uh, we are leaving the stage with Thank you so very much for being a patient listener to the conversation. I hope this was as exciting for you guys as it was, at least for me. Thank you.
