I started doing my own business, which turned out to be a disaster to be very honest. Because you know, what happens, you know, there is an aspiration, which is alive in every human being that he or she wants to create something of their own. So this is why I started my own debt management business, which didn't turn out well. And unfortunately, I had to move back to a professional career in 2013.
Please tell us about your story background and journey so
far.
I come from a small town in Rajasthan which has been formed
on the bank of the river Chambal, the name of the city is Kota. I have done my under graduation in Kota and then moved to Pune for pursuing my MBA which I did from Indira
Institute of management studies. I passed out in 2004, with a major in
marketing and a minor in finance.
I started my professional journey in the initial stages with a company, which is one of the most esteemed companies in the world named GE Capital. I was a part of GE's consumer business in the country. So I've worked there for almost eight and a half years where I've been handling different roles altogether, some into sales, credit collection, and in two different cities.
Initially, I started my career as a manager in Pune and then move
as a branch manager to the regional sales manager, Gujarat, then regional
collections manager, Gujarat. I left GE Capital in 2011. So it was an amazing
journey with GE as it was always like a school for me. There was a great learning
curve with that company. Also, I've done
a few quality certification programming with them. And in 2011, I've joined another
company, a French company dealing in two
different streams of consumer utilities like consumer compostable plastics.
I've worked with the company for almost 18 months. Since the line was deferred I wanted to do
something of my own.
I started doing my own business, which turned out to be a
disaster to be very honest. Because you know, what happens, you know, there is
an aspiration, which is alive in every human being that he or she wants to
create something of their own. So this is why I started my own debt management
business, which didn't turn out well. And unfortunately, I had to move back to
a professional career in 2013. So I joined back the consumer finance arm of
HDFC Bank. I joined them as a product
manager for auto loans and gold loans where I've worked almost for four years.
I've worked there and left them as a cluster for the Gujarat cluster, imagine
what good is out there. Then I joined as a zonal sales side at Fincare bank, a
small bank.
Moving to a small finance bank was tough for me. But since
it was a great learning curve altogether, you know, I mean, in life, you have
to choose the path. So, I wanted to something test something which I've never
tasted in my entire life, which is the microfinance segment of the country. So,
I moved as a zonal head with a company called Fincare Bank where I've worked
for 18 to 19 Odd months in mortgaging for western India. And then suddenly, the
entire era moved into a digital lending arm.
I joined as a National Sales Lead for Bajaj FinServ growth,
which has come to market. It's a digital lending platform altogether, which is
one of its kind. The Finserv market app provides you with 30 life products
available on the market which itself is one of the best things in the digital
world.
The journey was tough and challenging but our CEO has
contributed a major lot in shaping our careers in to this and it was a great
team of IT, credit operations, and
risk. Entire business teams and call canter teams have supported this role. And
then we have been successfully delivering a very decent volume of 250 Odd
crores by lending up. This is my professional journey so far.
How did you approach your career and what led you to reach such a pinnacle?
Oh, so I'm a person who wants to who been working with
financial services since the inception of his career everyone wants to get
upgraded. So, with a growing edge, you should be updated with new things, which
are coming into the market. If you are not updated then definitely, the market
will throw you out in the next 10 years. This is what maximum CEOs say and also
what my CEO has said to me. And this is true.
I'm approaching new things and new learning curves. Digital is something that is coming in nature now. And I wanted my career to be successful enough so that I can take some roles in the future with some of the good fintech and financial services arm. And this is a kind of a dream for me you know, at least at this level, your financial needs almost get confirmed a company they do well, but you have you know, thinks that you can create something of your own, which is from scratch.
A startup gives you a lot of opportunities you can create something of your own. So I'm enjoying my work. And I think this place is the right place to be. And to learn most, I have a lot of learning curves there. And I understand there are many more things to be understood like digital risk, analytics, and many things that need to be done out there. Different modeling of different processes needs to be there. So this is great, and definitely, I'm approaching my career towards the same.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced in your career? And how did you overcome that?
That is a good question to be asked. I will speak about them
in two parts. The greatest challenge in my career was when I started my venture
and it turned out to be a disaster. The job market was not that great in 2013. I've enrolled again, from a level where I've
dropped it too late, start at least two levels down umbrella, or minimum one
level down. When you already know things better than your bosses, you keep
asking yourself, whether I'm at the right place or not. So these all were the
tough parts where I had to work too hard and convince people that I can prove
myself into the new things.
Now, the second
challenge is what I'm facing already from it. Digital was a different field for
me. I was coming from a core sales background. So it was a very different task
to build too many risk and analytic modeling, a different way altogether to do
the business.
The way business has been done in this company has not been
done by the traditional finance companies or banks. So Yes it is a challenging
curve, but I'm learning a lot from it.
What
fundamental changes do you think are required in the FinTech sector to enhance
the adoption among the masses?
Yeah, I mean, this is very, very important. No, I will tell
you. If you talk about sales, there is a lot of transformation that has come in
the industry, where everyone wants to do payments digitally, and it has become
a normal thing in the world. But if you talk about FinTech, I already feel that almost 9 to 10 lakh odd
customers, 1 million-odd customers are coming on to platform every month for
searching for these kinds of loans. But yet still, I believe that this country
has a lot of potentials to do it. There are a lot of scopes to be done. Government
support is required for fintech in terms of KYC policies and mandate policies.
The government is also doing too many things in that sector.
Adoption at a normal consumer level is still low with a
country size of 130 crores. people are going for traditional agent models and adopting
them. So, that has to get eliminated over five years. I'm believing so.
How important is it for lending institutions to
consider a comprehensive view of a credit applicant’s financial profile?
During a gap in the industry, currently, there is a lot of
gap in the industry, which I believe has to be fulfilled at this moment. The cost of digital lending is very, very high, which is the biggest
challenge in the country today also. Because the sorting mediums are too high
conversions are too low, you have to mitigate the risk as them, but the
trending arm the country's trending towards this. So I believe there, we can
see almost 30 - 40 Odd fintechs have been developing in this country, which has
started doing such loans on their platforms. So I see a wonderful career coming
up for this, and there is going to be a superb journey for these companies and
employees.
How do you keep up with rapid changes happening in this sector and stay on top of the game?
You have to do the right thing! the basic thing is to keep being constant, keep doing the right thing and people understand the consumer demands. So you have to think like wherever, whatever, you want to create something and you want to bridge the gap, you want to think yourself that you are a consumer of this product.
what do you want it to look like? What do you like a digital property to feel like? so if you are thinking like a consumer and you know, opting for the things that a consumer wants on a digital property, then definitely it can bridge the gap and keep testing this, keep doing the real-time case studies into the market, keep trying consumer behaving pattern, keep learning from the others what they have created, keep applying your brains into digital properties of different companies. Once you're onto the toes, then definitely you can bridge the gap and things will turn around your table very soon.
And the last question, which I think is very simple and most important, according to me, because everyone wants to know, what book, what the person is reading. So which is a favorite book and why.
I just want to be very, very clear on what I want to present here. Yeah. So what I want to say is that I'm currently reading a book by a writer called Rashmi Bansal which is very good and I also like her book Stay hungry stay foolish. In 2008 I started reading this book and I read it even today. It gives a lot of inspiration to this young generation of entrepreneurs. she writes all stories about small entrepreneurs and how they become big, what they've done exactly in their career.
It is aspiring that whenever you do some startup whenever you do some
new things in life, there's a lot of hard things which you have to face. A lot
of troubles you have to face around the table. You have to keep going with the
flow and with keeping your confidence and then things will turn out to be your
way.
Connect the dots is another book which I like.
Interviewed By - Devyani Roy
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