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India has emerged as one of the key global fintech hubs, thereby creating huge room for fintech startups. The mushrooming of fintech companies left, right, and center has led to a welcome change in how scores of Indians pay, bank, borrow, invest, and insure themselves.

To champion the cause and accumulate ideas for the betterment of customer experience, Salesforce Fintech Initiative, powered by YourStory, launched FINTELLECT, a first-of-its-kind initiative working as the ultimate matchmaker between fintech founders, managers, and experts from the fintech ecosystem to strengthen networks and gather valuable insights from experts in the field.

How fintech is shaping the financial industry

The primary idea of fintech as an independent industry evolved in the early 2000s, post which the sector was hit by several waves, better pronounced as fintech 2.0, revealed Anish Achuthan, Co-founder and CEO, Open Financial Technologies. “The Indian fintech market is worth $31 billion and is only behind China and USA. With over 6,000 fintech startups in the country today, the sector might also emerge as the key industry for job seekers, creating job opportunities, aided by central and state governments,” he noted.

The Indian fintech sector is projected to touch the $150-160 billion market size by 2025, according to a report by MAAS, an Affle company. Digitisation, along with technology and proper regulation of the framework for a fair, progressive, and transparent ecosystem has been effectively useful in pulling out India from the shadows to emerge as one of the fastest-growing fintech hubs, believes Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson, and CEO, Salesforce India. “The biggest benefit of technology is that it leaves a footprint, and therefore allows us to gather the data. Innovation today is on a rapid growth spree, thereby improving the customer experience. Having the golden record of customers today helps to reach out to them in an ‘opti-channel’ way, i.e., enabling customers the most suitable options. We also have the algorithm-driven financial transactions that have a system-generated knowledge helping them,” she added, talking about the massive transformation of the entire ecosystem.

Incorporating new financial technology might increase the chance of creating risks. So, how do you strike a perfect balance between innovation and risk? To this, Harshil Mathur, Co-Founder, and CEO, of Razorpay had a fitting reply. “The true-end state of digital banking lies in the fact that people don’t have to think about risks. Rather, with just a single click customers can complete their transactions, and this would be only possible by leveraging technology, and I am quite hopeful about reaching that place,” he added.

Technology is all set to help where you would want it, according to Bipin Preet Singh, Founder, and CEO, MobiKwik. “Digital technology gives a far more granular view of risk management than the traditional models and is used to learn and unlearn new methods of risk management. Thus, risk management will become stronger with time, banking on technology, thereby strengthening the financial industry,” he said.

Technology moves through collaborative effort, and change is the only constant. Thus, being nimble and agile are the basic keystones of remaining in the game.

Future of fintech

Initiating the Salesforce Startup Program, Sanket Atal, SVP and MD – Sites, Salesforce, said, “Our focus is on the startup’s success, based on a comprehensive unified approach leveraging which the startups can connect to proper entities and platforms. Finally, helping the startups to emerge as the winners in the market if they are successful enough to compile a product, create solutions, and finally make the end customers happy. Of course, that would also include business mentorship for the startups, training them to market their products well.”

Ashish Fafadia, Partner, Blume Ventures, decoded India’s fintech future, highlighting how the pandemic has made it quite clear that fintech as a domain is not vertical, and in the days to arrive, there would be the evolution of businesses incorporating more than a single aspect of fintech. “I strongly feel that we are well poised, with strong emerging case studies, and of course, the presence of businesses which have to prove their valuation, and even if they take time, a few of these would graduate, and take forward the idea of a holistic ecosystem,” he added.

A few parallel demo sessions were also held focusing on customer retention, while seamlessly achieving customer satisfaction. The first one started with Sonali Samyal, Principal Solution Engineer, Salesforce, delving deeper into the systems of engagement for the wealth advisory teams, from investment management to financial guidance, where she spoke at length about firms leveraging technologies while aiding to personalise client engagement.

Next Nipun Sharma, Principal Solution Engineer, Salesforce, discussed the ways of retaining customers through superior customer service, either through agent-lead or digital engagement, while driving lucrative business results, thereby, making every engagement effortless.

Ina Mehta, Solution Engineer, Salesforce, and Kartik Prabhakar, Regional Sales Director, Commercial Business, Salesforce India, talked about streamlining merchant onboarding for payment companies, and why a seamless customer experience owes it to the team effort.

Finally, Saurabh Gupta, Lead Solution Engineer, Salesforce, focused on delivering hyper-personalisation and digital-first customer experiences in an ever-changing banking environment.