I have two people working under me. One is from a recognized institute like IIM and one is a simple commerce graduate. One comes from an affluent family and the other from a not so affluent family.
Both of them in terms of learning, based on capability and delivery stand at the same level. But what the person who doesn't have a degree from prestigious institutions does better than the other is he has the hunger for it. And that has been my challenge throughout my career.
1. Tell us about your story, background, and journey so far.
Let me start with the background first. I belong to a nuclear family and my upbringing has been fairly middle class. I have been taught to work hard to be where I want to be. Since I belonged to a nuclear family I was pretty independent and made my own choices. Both my parents were working so I had to handle a lot of things on my own from a young age. This led me to explore a lot of things on my own and learn faster about various things in life.
The journey so far can be divided into two parts: my professional and my personal life.
I have a small nuclear family. I am married to a person with whom I chose to spend the rest of my life. We have a beautiful boy. We are a family which exercises a lot of keen interest out of ordinary experiences whenever we get a chance or the time.
On the professional front, my journey has been that of great learnings, I have got chances of working with great leaders. I am a simple commerce graduate and I don't hold any post-graduate or master's degree from any prestigious institutions. The reason for that is that after my graduation when I applied for my masters I got selected in almost all the top 5 institutes that I applied for. I also cleared my group discussion and the first round of interviews in all 5 institutions. In my final round, I was asked questions that I couldn't relate to as to how they would impact or how it would result from what I didn't study or I didn't pursue as my career. I was pretty straightforward and upfront about it and that was the reason I was not selected.
Thereafter I made it a point that there is nothing I cannot do that can be given to an individual via a prestigious institute. Therefore I knew from an early age that if I had to sustain I had to work that much harder too. So I had kept my benchmarks higher and I had to set my standards very high.
In the so far illustrious career of around 20 years right from being sales executive and service representative for a company, now I handle complete operation services and strategic initiatives for a very large company. So that is my journey on my professional side.
My story so far has been in leaving a legacy behind in anything and everything I do, be it on the professional front, be it on the personal front, be it with family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, be it with team members, be with certain seniors and professionals in the industry. I have always believed in leaving a legacy behind. And legacy always translates into adding value to the other person whether it be on the professional front or the personal front.
2. How did you approach your career & what led you to reach such a pinnacle?
I was not very ambitious in life when it came to particulars like a career path. I really didn't know, still, I don't know what I want to do but what I do know is I have the capability and ability to do anything and everything. And if I do something it has to create impact and add some value as I like to leave a legacy behind. I have always been working towards my goals and my career.
Your career cannot be your personal goal. Your personal goals have to be different, it has to be your passion. I have always set my personal goals benchmark very very high. And to achieve that I was always conscious of the fact that I had to plan. Plan well in advance because you have set the benchmark so high for you to achieve. We have to keep planning constantly. Once you start planning you start to constantly think as to what you should do and what not to do, how to do, why to do and you keep searching for answers and you keep searching for bigger things and bigger things and that has been my approach in my career.
I keep a keen interest in the work I do. I also believe that in the due course of time I have gained my skills to make anything that can add value to the organization & to its people.
Often in this world, people get limited to the work and transactions that we are doing. They don't look for ways and means to change the things that they are doing to add value. For that, you have to plan. You have to plan how to keep adding value. When you do that you start moving forward and that has been my approach.
3. What is the greatest challenge you've faced in your career & how did you overcome that?
The greatest challenge that I have faced in my career is that this world has prejudiced the word education given by the means of prestigious institutions. I can give you an example very clearly: I have two people working under me. One is from a recognized institute like IIM and one is a simple commerce graduate. One comes from an affluent family and the other from a not so affluent family. Both of them in terms of learning, based on capability and delivery stand at the same level. But what the person who doesn't have a degree from prestigious institutions does better than the other is he has the hunger for it. And that has been my challenge throughout my career.
I have always had to compete with people who had degrees and by just having those degrees, we were far away in terms of capability, ability, growth that I had then. I knew that I was much better than them so I had to keep working much harder and keep moving forward more than myself than anybody else.
One can achieve great heights without such degrees. For example, if I were to compare with my peers who are from reputed institutions. If I have to look back 10 or 20 years to what I have become, I think I had more exposure to companies and worked with bigger names compared to them.
You are always put against people who are thought to have the pedigree of greatness. And the reality is they may not. But for people to realize that you need to keep working that much harder.
4. What fundamental changes do you think are required in the fintech sector to enhance the adoption among the masses?
I don't think that a fundamental change is there for fintech to adopt to make the masses realize. We need to understand the industrial language. India has been a country where established financial institutions are doing a great majority of the lending. Market share in terms of lending is a mass affluent segment that has been captured by established financial institutions.
Now fintech, the way they work is simple, they raise money through equities, they set up a technology stack and then they need capital to fund people. The funding that they do is not to the extent of large-scale exercise. Some of them may have explored a medium ticket line of around 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs, 20 lakhs again the quantum or the volume of the persons who are willing to be doing when compared to the large scale financial institutions is nothing.
So we first need to understand what the business model is, fintech needs to realize where they need to concentrate to make their money from and be very clear with it.
Fintech has been adapted from the western markets. In the US the predominant concept of payday loans is where you give small ticket loans of 200$, 300$ where the lender has to lend and the borrower has to return it in a week, a month, or two.
Now understand that the payday loan concept or small-ticket loan concept cannot be applied in India. Even if you create it in India right now you have to create a niche market and excel in it. It takes time for technological destruction, it takes time for people to think as to what works.
Fintech’s need to pick a niche market and tell them that this is where they would like to concentrate. If it is a payday loan it is a payday loan, if it is a small ticket loan it is a small ticket loan, if it is a big-ticket loan it is a big-ticket loan. It is a mix of all types of loans they need to know where in the market they would want to improve. Because if you want to create this you need to have a market share, if you have to get the market share you can get it only in the segments, and there are three segments: the mass affluent, the affluent, and the non-affluent. The mass affluent and the affluent are already dominated by institutions.
Fintech needs to realize where they want to pay and get their product offerings right. If you have to do a payday loan you cannot expect that to happen in the urban market because in the urban market very few people will take the payday loan, which would be required by somebody in the rural market who earns daily wages.
So you need to go to the rural market, now the challenge there is that in the rural market they may not understand technology, so fintech needs to clearly understand the segment they want to create and align to that fact and stick with the same for them to be able to play and create an impact.
5.How important is it for lending institutions to consider a comprehensive view of a credit applicant’s financial profile?
You can't do credit without a credit assessment of a credit applicant's profile. No institution today will give anybody without a thorough credit assessment in finance marketing.
6. How do you keep up with rapid changes happening in this sector & stay on top of the game?
It is a very simple equation for me. I have a vision and I keep focussing on what helps me enable that vision and that's it.
In the stage of disruption, there is too much data, there is too much information, there is too much technology. We often keep spending time looking at what's happening, what is there on offer, what others are doing trying to figure out how we can use that in our scheme. My approach is very simple, I do the reverse. I have the vision, I have the need and therefore what is available to fulfill them and that's how I make sure that I touch the result in terms of noise around, disruption and technologies, data and info, a lot of startups springing up.
How do you keep focus? That's how I keep focus. Solutions needn't satisfy your use case. You have a use case and then search for solutions and often the approach is, there are so many solutions available in the many avenues available. Let's try some of them to see what works for us versus I know what I want and therefore the solution that I have to use has to work for me.
7. Which is your favorite book and why?
My favorite book is by Jim Corbett.
I hope that you might have heard this name and know this name because it is associated with the Jim Corbett National park. Any of his books are my favorite and the reason for that is that he wrote his books after an illustrious career of twenty years. In 20025 years our brain can forget a lot of things but the clarity with which he writes and recalls all is mind-boggling.
He always vouches for conservation in India. He loved our country, he helped Indian people, he helped the Indian Government and he is a personality that can be admired. I don't think he is a personality who would have ever existed in a million years.
Interviewed by - Krishaa Radhakrishnan
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