EMPOWERED BANKING

Voice. Vernacular. Visual. These three aspects of the ‘Hello Ujjivan’ app, or the so-called 3V approach, did the trick for Ujjivan Small Finance Bank and helped the lender emerge as the winner in BT-KPMG’s Best Bank in Innovation category.

Launched a little over a year ago, the app, which is currently available in nine languages—Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Odia, Assamese and English—has been a huge hit with the bank customers, especially those who are illiterate or semiliterate. Further, the voice feature of the app has been a huge hit with the bank’s women customers of the Bengaluru-based small finance bank (SFB).

“Semi-literate or illiterate customers identify certain words with pictures. While it is an Android-only app, the combination of visual, vernacular and voice has helped a lot of customers, especially women who are comfortable with voice search,” says Ittira Davis, the lender’s MD & CEO.

The app adapts to users' dialects and responds accordingly, providing visual aids and voice guides in their chosen language for seamless banking tasks like paying loan EMIs, opening deposits, transferring funds, and more.

The popularity of the app can be seen in the fact that it already has over 500,000 downloads and a four-star rating on Google Play Store. The bank anticipates two million downloads in the first three years, with five million monthly transactions. Additionally, it leverages its 750 branches to train customers hesitant about technology.

This assumes significance as SFBs typically have the bulk of customers based in Tier 2 and 3 locations. The regulatory compliance also mandates that SFBs have at least 25% of the branches in rural and unbanked areas.

‘Hello Ujjivan’ has been created by the bank in collaboration with Navana.AI, a tech firm that specialises in designing speech recognition and generative AI powered solutions for companies.