Millions buzz KreditBee’s app everyday
The lending platform uses 10+ scorecards during the complete user journey:
KreditBee is a fintech platform from Finnovation Tech Solutions, offering instant personal loans of up to `200,000 to professionals. It has a strong focus on online tech-based and data-centric KYC. Its CEO Madhusudan Ekambaram i s di r ectl y involved i n product, business strategy, technology and investments. It is a full-stack digital lending platform, with the entire life cycle of the loan, starting from application and origination to disbursement and repayment being completed online. Madhusudan Ekambaram says the company has followed the digital-first strategy in its entire product journey, and it has been received very well by the customers. “During the last month of pre-covid operations, we had more than 5 million loan customers, out of which roughly 2 million were active. The daily active users on our app are over 1 million, and the monthly active users are over 15 million. We have over 30 million app downloads within 2 years of operations,” says he.
ACQUISITION STRATEGY
KreditBee has an offline field sales team of over 200 people spread over 10 cities helping in the journey of financial inclusiveness across geographies and demographics. These sales folks work in tandem with various DSAs and merchants for a more robust outreach among target consumers. Madhusudan Ekambaram says: since the entire acquisition strategy is digital-first, for more than 95% of the loans, the communication channel is online. “Having said that, the platform or distribution channel for our loans is the KreditBee app only, which means that the user needs to have a smartphone with an internet connection, and download our app on their phones to avail a loan from us,” says he.
OPTIMIZING CRM
The entire process of underwriting and collections does not require any physical touchpoint with the customer, which makes it all the more important for it to deploy analytics as an overall strategy. “On the origination side, we have a proprietary rule engine which works on over 6500 data variables acquired from over 120 data sources,” says Madhusudan Ekambaram, adding: “We have 10+ scorecards that are used during the complete user journey - right from customer onboarding to credit line assessments to collections prioritization. Even on the collections side, we use vernacular languages for a larger relatability to the user. CRM optimization techniques like template, send-time and channel optimization are also used for a better overall output by customizing the user experience on our platform.”
INHOUSE SOLUTION
KreditBee’s tech, risk, data and product team comprises over 200 people. The company also has an IT support team to help in the maintenance, support and logistics for its smooth functioning across different offices. It has enabled its telecollections and operations workforce with smartphones and laptops with internet connectivity, along with in-built CRM tools to help them contextually reach out to the customers. Madhusudan Ekambaram says for the tech, product, marketing, risk, data and finance teams, there are laptops, and in certain cases, desktops. This enables them to work from home in general, and particularly during these extraordinary times.
He adds: “We use Amazon Web Services for a good part of our compute, hot/cold Storage, ML and AI model hosting. We work closely with Google for our in-house CRM solution, and mobile related services like user authentication, Firebase/GA for analytics and marketing acquisition (Google UAC). Cloudflare is used majorly for catering to our security needs like firewalls, DDOS protection, etc. For our KYC/identity/credit underwriting services (Face-match, Face-liveness, Digital E-Sign, Video KYC, and OCR to name a few), we use a mixture of inhouse solutions and solutions provided by vendors like DigiTap. ai and Hyperverge amongst others.”
ACTIVE ON SOCIAL CHANNEL
Right now, KreditBee is going slow on its inorganic marketing and promotions on the acquisition side, considering the overall business scenario. Madhusudan Ekambaram says depending on how the situation pans out over the next couple of months, it will be taking an emergent call accordingly for the remainder of financial year. “We are very active on all social channels, and we treat them not just as a communication channel but also as a service channel for our end consumers. We have helped over 10,000 customers with education and enablement of moratorium on their loans purely on social media, and many more on queries with regard to disbursement and repayment. With the larger presence of our customers across the digital coordinates, it is extremely important to use these channels in the right way to connect with our user base,” says he.
The current IT & Digital team at IDBI Federal Life Insurance is 17 member strong. The teams are supported by onsite and offsite resources from its vendor partners. The count of these vendor resources is close to 100. Other than specific technical skills, what Ameet expects from the team is (i) understanding of business needs, (ii) keeping an eye open for the latest developments in technology and their deployment by other companies in the sector, (iii) a sense of keeping costs under control and (iv) maintaining a constant vigil on cyber security threats. IDBI Federal is also hiring on a need basis. Ameet indicates: “We are also evaluating gig players and the start-up ecosystem for project-based support.”
The lockdown has brought about a sense of urgency in implementation or fastforwarding of some initiatives at the company and Ameet Das believes while the company had a digital focus for some time now, the road map is clearer and it will have stick to it. Technology enablement will continue to be a focus area for a significant time from now, says he.