CRM onboards customers, Kiosks serve them
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All India Society for Electronics and Computer Technology (AISECT) is India’s l eading social enterprise functioning in the financial inclusion space since 2009 with the objective of providing financial and banking services to the semi-urban and rural population of the country. It operates 4382 kiosks in rural, semi urban and urban areas, out of which 870 were opened during the FY202021. Siddharth Chaturvedi, Executive Vice President, AISECT Group, provides insights into the tech-led growth in the last FY under tough times:
Mehul Dani: What are the underlying technologies that you use in your organization?
Siddharth Chaturvedi: We use the Banking Correspondent network to offer financial services such as enabling digital transactions and cash withdrawals in semi-urban and rural parts of India. We also shifted our marketing campaign online with most of the budget going into online advertising such as Google Ads and SEOs.
More than 80% of our customers are mobile users, mostly Android phones. We enable our BCs with technology platforms so that they can interact with customers through calls or emails, which are completely automated, and calculate their commissions, which are paid off later. Over `2.01 billion in commission has been earned by the kiosk operators since inception, out of which `450 million we earned during the 2020-21.
How is your digital strategy implemented in the last FY?
AISECT’s digital strategy primarily involves completely pivoting towards IT. We are also looking at cloud-based solutions in order to facilitate capability, scalability, functionality and reduced maintenance. Besides that, we are looking at increasing the efficiency of each employee using the digital platforms.
Can you give details of banks and insurance companies with which AISECT has tie-ups for customer acquisition?
AISECT is currently working with 5 banks - State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Madhyanchal Gramin Bank and Punjab Gramin Bank. For life insurance, we have tie-ups with LIC, SBI Life and Kotak Life; for general insurance with New India Assurance, United India Insurance and ICICI Lombard General Insurance; for health insurance we have tie-ups with Care Health Insurance and for agriculture insurance with the Agriculture Insurance Company.
Our customers are being served with the help of CRM, which lets a person store customer and prospect contact information. CRM has helped our organization gain an insight into the behavior of the customers and modify our business operations to ensure that the customers are served well.
The enrolment of customers under social security schemes during the FY 2020-21 for Atal Pension Yojana was 77,485, for Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana it was 2,27,417, and for Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana 580,897. The average commission earned by a customer service point (CSP) is `10,000-12,000 per month.
Since inception in 2009, total 10 million accounts have been opened, having a balance of over `20 billion. During the FY2020-21, 400,000 bank accounts have been opened. The average balance per account is `2000. Other than that, we have over `350 billion transaction amount since the inception of FI initiatives, out of which `100 billion is during FY2020-21.
Please discuss in detail technologies that you have deployed for improving onboarding and their business impact.
The technology deployed for improving on boarding has been CRM, which has facilitated our lead management. Using CRM, we receive proper information on our leads, their status and an analysis of the lead, who did not come on board, etc. CRM has further helped us make the requisite changes in our campaigns as well. We have opened 8.5 million bank accounts and done transactions worth over `150 billion.
In the prevailing covid scenario, what are your targets and plans for IT, digital initiatives for tech led growth?
We are aware that the pandemic is here to stay for a long time and AISECTs target is highly aimed towards spreading its wings online and transforming digitally in order to fuel growth. We will use new technologies to improve business operations. We are also changing the organization’s business model in order to introduce new products which will cater to the revised market. We estimate that approximately 90% of our revenues will be online in the years to come. The recovery needs to be digital!