EXPRESS COMPUTER | APRIL, 2017
14 | STARTUP CORNER
Lessons from a startup’s journey MANAVJEET SINGH, CEO and Founder, Rubique, shares the key lessons learnt while building his startup
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or any startup, initial foundation built up is always a challenging and especially when you are a technology company, it becomes more imperative. The journey of Rubique which started as bestdealfinance.com in October 2014 was also of some hits and misses in overall approach including technology. But small pilot runs and with quick rectification of the mistakes, Rubique is establishing its foothold in the market with growing acceptance from the overall ecosystem and going strong with 60+ financial institutions, 155+ product agreements across SME and retail loans, ` 440+ crores worth loan disbursed and
12300+ success credit card setups. The struggle days For any breakthrough technology to get implemented successfully in the market, initially roadblocks are evident. With the digital India wave picking up, our journey started with full enthusiasm to make financing simple through technology but the first hindrance was to take buy-in from financial institutions. With the market full of offline players and web aggregators, it was getting difficult for the team to establish our unique proposition. But somehow we managed to get buy-in few from banks and signed them up. Policy digitization When we started receiving
the policies from the banks we realized how different they were from each other, mainly because of the varied risk appetite of each. Being a marketplace, we had to develop a solution which could run based on customers’ inputs and check on eligibility on right offer. So the team studied each policy and came up with a set of 500 data points to be captured to make this work. Fortunately, we also got some bank’s consent to work on integration so we could provide the in-principal approval online itself (one of its kind, not tried by any other player in market so far). With few integrations and first version of matchmaking algorithm we launched our website bestdealfinance. We thought we nailed it. Integrations and traffic Traffic was the favourite word of all investors that we met that time. But we deliberately stayed away from building traffic as we wanted our
platform to provide wide range of offers to the customers and fulfill the promise of our brand. Getting more offers invariably meant more financial institutions. But as we continued meeting them we realized that, apart from accepting our propositions some of the financial institutions system were not ready to go ahead with implementation. At the same time, we realized the traffic which were coming on the website somehow was not going ahead beyond a point. It was alarm bells for us to make certain changes. Breaking free from set assumptions It was time to relook at everything – our identity, our technology, our distribution. The certain assumptions based on which we marched ahead were not yielding any significant results. The market was heating up and before anyone else took the lead, we had to crack it. The team started rigorous research in terms of meeting the financial institu-
tions, associates and other stakeholders benchmarking local as well as international competition. Post these findings, the first thing we did was changing our brand identity; bestdealfinance became Rubique – a technology solution which would make finance simple for consumers by solving the complex puzzle like process involved in it. Knowing that the proposition of online approval would instant click to millennials who are hungry for ‘Instant’, we brought in more vibrancy in the logo by adding new age colors. Now the backbone – technology; following customized approach for each financial institution for policy digitization and integration was taking more time and effort. It was adversely hampering the go-to market strategy. We needed speed to execute this. The technology team relooked at the system architecture and focused on making it more agile, plug and play model. Also instead of focusing on readymade solution available in the market, team decided to build an in-house CRM system to fit the process flow. After understanding the customer’s unwillingness to fill up the long forms online, the team made significant changes in the entire process flow to make it simpler and intuitive for customers. Even the quali-
fication engine and matchmaking algorithm was refined and the 500 data points were brought down to 300 data points across all products. These rectifications helped the team to speed up the process of integrations and currently there are 15 integrations live on the website and 25 in different stages of approval with financial institutions.
financial institutions but there have been increasing requests from other e-commerce players and we are working on the solutions for them. There is lot of action on the ground and along with progressive market, we are quite confident that Rubique would leave its mark.
And the journey continues From bestdealfinance to Rubique, there were many leaps and bounds. But the journey was interesting, a lot we learned and there is more to come. Not only from
When we started receiving the policies from the banks we realized how different they were from each other, mainly because of the varied risk appetite of each company Manavjeet Singh CEO and Founder, Rubique
Indian Fintech startup uses big data analytics to offer real time credit UNLIKE OTHER financial institutions, the CashCare option is available at the point of sale, where a customer can apply and instantly use the credit limit provided to them Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@expressindia.com
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n a country where 75% of households earn less than ` 5 lakh annually, there is a big shortfall in consumer financing. Typically, banks and NBFCs are not equipped to provide a solution because they prefer catering to higher income segment, require plenty of paperwork and a longer-term relationship with the bank, which makes it challenging for consumers to avail this option. Indian Fintech startup, CashCare has tried to explore this niche in this market by making financing process relatively simple for the con-
sumers, using technology. Using an app or using a Webbased application, consumers only need to spend 2-5 minutes to fill basic personal and work information and provide access to shopping and spending history. As soon as the customer hits the submit button, the customer gets EMI options and can proceed to complete the purchase immediately. Unlike other financial institutions, the CashCare option is available at the point of sale, where a customer can apply and instantly use the credit limit provided to them. Vikas Sekhri, Founder, Cashcare Technlogy, states, “We specialize in point of sale consumer loans where consumers can convert their purchases into EMIs with one click. CashCare has built a proprietary credit algorithm that enables consumers to get access to instant credit.” Going beyond conventional data What’s unique about CashCare’s business model is that it goes beyond credit score and bank statement data and uses social, shopping history, mobile payments, utility payments and behavioral data to understand credit behavior of the customers.
The firm believes that with modern data, CashCare can calculate loan risk better and faster than any existing system in the market. Its customers are value seekers and aspirational who are looking to purchase products that meet their current needs. Typically, customers
Cashcare uses social, shopping history, mobile payments, utility payments and behavioral data to understand credit behavior have a salary range between ` 10-25000 and belong to an age group of 22-30 years, and working in small to mid-size companies. Real-time credit scoring system CashCare uses technology to provide a real-time credit scoring for the customers. The firm uses more than 10,000 data points about the customers and utilizes big data analytics to assess the
credit results within a few seconds. “On a real-time basis, our system pings various databases (e-commerce data, CIBIL, bank statement, social connects) via APIs. This data is parsed, optimized, analyzed and run through a proprietary algorithm. We are revoluti-onizing consumer credit by creating IPs around fraud mechanics and using transactional data to predict credit behavior. We use bank-
ing, SMS, payments and shopping history data to do real-time credit assessment,” states Sekhri. The firm believes that keeping up with changes in a consumer’s life is important to understand a consumer’s current ability to take and serve a loan. Both transactional and social data play a great role in understanding the consumer. For example, transactional data such as the purchase of home appliances and other
products could signify a significant change in a consumer’s life such as the purchase of a new home, an increase in income, or a life event such as marriage. “Typically, organizations are completely unaware of how to measure these changes and understand how they affect the borrowing ability of a consumer. We are using technology to level the playing field and are tapping into the underserved market
to offer consumer credit more efficiently, accurately, and securely,” explains Sekhri. At the point of sale, CashCare can enable a realtime approval process and customers can start using the credit within 30 minutes. From a customer’s perspective, applying and getting a credit card can easily take 7-10 days. The firm has already processed credit for more than 20,000 applicants and is growing at a rapid pace.