Creating Sustained Value For Businesses In India

For the past one year, Prajakta has been running a startup that makes a one-of-a-kind external ventilation system for PPE kits, which provides healthcare workers with some relief from sweat and heat during long working hours. While technological innovation was initially her biggest challenge, it’s the day to day operations that’ve bogged her down.

Dozens of standalone systems for IT, Marketing, Bookkeeping, compliances, HR and payroll are eating into her time and preventing her from expanding her research into more useful products. She’s afraid that, eventually, her startup will become a run of the mill business, and she’s going to lose her purpose for developing technologies for the betterment of society.

If you’re an entrepreneur reading this, Prajakta’s predicament might sound uncomfortably familiar to your own. You recognise her dilemma and empathise with it. You find yourself entangled in a host of business support activities, which are bothersome, but essential, to ensuring smooth operations.

However, in taking care of them, you’re unable to spend time building your core business and focusing on the drivers of growth and profits. The choice between running the business or growing the business is not an easy one to make, and brings forth the question: how do you break out of this cycle?

Perhaps, we can help?

For decades, with our unique mix of local and global platforms, we’ve been at the heart of businesses, both big and small, new and old. But today, we are poised to break away from providing just traditional financial services and embrace more diversified strategies to create sustained value for you. To do so, we aren’t looking to add one or two offerings to our portfolio, but rather create an entire ecosystem that caters to easing the pain points experienced by businesses.

What exactly is this new initiative? And also, how is it likely to help your business? Let us paint you a picture.

Imagine if you didn’t have to search high and low for the multiple vendors, consultants, and service providers needed to run various constituents of your business like marketing, compliance, legal etc.? How would it be if, instead of coordinating with individual service partners, you had one point of contact? What would it be like if you didn’t have to spend hours checking reviews before choosing a service partner? If you could have dedicated sector specialists backed by a stellar track record working for you? Finally, what if you weren’t alone in your entrepreneurial journey? If someone walked with you at each step, regardless of whether you’re setting up shop, running operations, scaling up, or even looking to get investor interest to help you scale?

Sounds a lot more efficient? Well, that’s what we have in store for you - a bouquet of essential services a company needs bundled neatly into one place. They answer the primary challenges faced by business owners like Prajakta, free them up to focus on core activities, and even help them scale up when the time arrives.

New age startups, with their tech-savvy entrepreneurs, are already familiar with, and thriving on, integrated systems. Their expectations, shaped by global exposure, are already demanding more from financial institutions. Convenient, personalised, and cross-sectoral services under one unified platform have become essential to the way they do business.

For them, a more holistic service bucket makes banking more accessible and easier and it expands the role of a bank to a unified solution provider.

Also, let’s not forget that a lot of startups have global aspirations. They would love to take their business beyond the boundaries of India and seek out newer markets. However, with great expansion comes great operational responsibilities; one that they simply may not completely know how to navigate. So, if their bank offered global expertise and localised solutions as part of their extended services, you would truly have a partner that shares and facilitates your vision of growth.

Now you’re probably wondering if this services ecosystem is useful for traditional businesses? Yes, they are.

The term ‘traditional business’ itself is fast becoming redundant. More and more companies are embracing modern practices and hopping on to the digital bandwagon. If there was any doubt or hesitation left in a few minds, that was effectively erased by the pandemic that hit us last year.

The message was loud and clear - going digital was the only way forward if business wanted to survive and stay relevant.

We understand that changing an established and long practiced system takes time. That’s why the new program is designed to introduce you to the concept of platforms and partnerships in a step-by-step manner, and show you how it’s seamlessly integrated with the bank itself. We start with basic integrations and prepare to support future innovations.

For instance, a company that’s been selling dry fruits through local retail channels for half a decade now feels the need to build an eCommerce store with international shipping. They acknowledge the changing dynamics of the market, but find the process of moving their business online overwhelming. Not only do we make the transition smoother, it also provides the tools needed to make online operations profitable and successful. So, if the owners of the dry fruit company need a plug and play solution that takes care of everything from inventory management to payment processing, we can help set it up.

Why now, you ask?

We are living in a time where a digital ecosystem and collaborative partnerships are essential for any business to thrive. It’s the need of the hour that all of us look beyond the basics and expand our horizons. That's why, we feel it’s our responsibility to play our part by going beyond the traditional banking services.

Whether you are a small business that needs simpler solutions like payroll management and payment reconciliation, a mid-size company that could benefit from CRM and project management platforms, or a large scale company looking for end-to-end ICT services, we are geared up to facilitate that and provide the right platform. In fact, since we’re with you at almost every stop of your journey, we go way beyond being just a bank.

Curious? Watch this space for more and get ready to take your business places!

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This article is co-authored by:

Prakash Jaiswal, a startup enthusiast, Shekhar Lele, the startup concierge, and me- Anuj Kanwar, learning to be a startup sommelier.