Emerging digital technological innovations are redefining the way companies and consumers transact on a day-to-day basis. Utilizing tech tools, fintech companies are offering simple and scientific solutions to offer seamless and innovative financial services.?

Rahul Agarwal, Group CTO of Capri Global Capital Ltd feels the same. We got a chance to speak with him; Excerpt of the interview below:

Tell us about your journey till now

My journey until now has been relatively straightforward. I am a technophile whose first love is technology and engineering. After completing my post-graduation from IIT Delhi, I started as a software engineer with a tech company. ?

In the last 18 years of working, I have started loving technology and its implementation for business more and the various ways of implementing tech to streamline a business / the intersection of technology and problem-solving. I got the opportunity to work for Unicorns, and a few large corporations.?

In my experience so far, your team is your biggest asset. A leader can only be as good as their team's performance. Because of this ideology, I have become a big believer of investing time in people and pushing them to develop an attitude of continuous learning.?

Another fundamental thing I learned is that technology must solve a purpose./serve a certain purpose. If you are building something which is not helping the business then eventually it would fade away.?

As a result of all these factors, I believe I have evolved from a pure techie to a solution provider. I'm constantly eager to solve problems and provide solutions for the next 10x scale of business.

With the Govt of India's Digital India initiative, how do you think technology intervention will change the leading landscape?

According to a report shared by LIRNEasia -- a regional think tank working on digital policy issues -- in partnership with ICRIER -- an economic policy think tank, Over 130 million users came online in 2020 and 2021 from which nearly 80 million came online in 2020 and 43 percent of them (around 34 million) came online due to the COVID-19 crisis. The Government of India’s increased emphasis on digitization and various initiatives like ‘cashless economy’, ‘Digital India’ is giving a boost to digitization.

Budget 2022 also had a lot of initiative by the Indian government, to uplift the nation with tech-driven measures. The government has put in great efforts for digital inclusion of the banking system that will allow an enormous and untapped population to access digital banking services.?

Data collection and analysis will also play a huge role in constructing the consumer experience. User data can be analyzed and leveraged using technology, such as AI and machine learning, to understand user behaviour and offer personalized products and services. ?

Constant innovation is becoming the norm as a result of the growing focus on digital and technology, all players will be forced to use cutting-edge technology and provide the strongest pricing and services. Also, the hyper-focus on digital and tech will ease the path for FinTech startups such as ours to scale and grow rapidly. In this scenario of rapid advancements and steep competition, the customer will always come out on top.

Can you please share the new digital initiatives adopted by Capri Global to improve customer experience?

Yes, of course, we are always working towards adopting new tech and offering the best products to our users. In our upcoming Gold Loan platform, using the real-time integrations and analytics models, we are ensuring that a customer's gold loan is in their account within 30 mins.?

We are also building our One Stop Shop consumer app which will give our users 100% transparency over their Loan Account, Payments, taking out new loans, enquiries, connections, and so on.

Aside from that, we are always working to replace outdated systems and methods with cutting-edge alternatives. Paperless is the way to go and we adhere to this as much as feasible and in accordance with RBI guidelines. We have built our own unique document processing engine which not only does the image processing but also does the quality scoring of bank statements, salary slips and other documents.

What are the future plans as Group CTO of Capri Global?

Apart from establishing key systems in-house, we will continue to strengthen our top-tier tech and product team, which will enable us to be at the forefront of embracing and integrating the latest developments in tech and data analytics. We have always underlined the importance of data and analytics in making strategic decisions. We will remain focused on developing and providing the smartest and most relevant tools and solutions to help our users traverse the difficult decision-making process and make educated decisions

Capri Global is using disruptive technology products for transforming from a traditional NBFC to a leading FinTech company. With its digital transformation initiatives, the company is working towards modernizing legacy systems, in effect providing ease of banking to customers, building transparency, going paperless, boosting operational efficiency, and ensuring faster turnaround. ?

They recently tied up with banking major State Bank of India (SBI) to offer MSME loans. Capri Global and SBI will disburse MSME loans across over 100 touchpoints across India starting December 2021.