Planview CEO Razat Gaurav plans to double or triple India business in 3-5 years citing biggest opportunity in BFSI

We are focussed on two vectors in India–to tap into the talent pool here and second, to go after the customer base and generate revenue opportunities, which we started about a year ago. We’ve worked with Aditya Birla Capital, Apollo Tyres, Dr. Reddy’s, TVS Motors and others. This year we’re looking to more than double that business.

BFSI is a key sector, both globally and in India. We’re also in the early stages of evaluating our go-to-market motion with government and PSUs, where we see potential for value-add in bringing new governance, mature planning and delivery processes. We also have a lot of global customers that have large GCCs in India such as JP Morgan Chase, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Colgate. So we’re also beginning to work with them and connect the dots with our global relationships. Close to 50 per cent of our BFSI customers in US, Australia, Europe and UK have GCCs in India, so us partnering with and supporting them in India is an important expectation they have from us.

In India, different demographics are at different stages of the digital shift. The range of variance is very high and the scale is unprecedented, in some ways. Smartphone adoption is one of the fastest and cheapest, and online payments are becoming more pervasive than even some of the more developed markets. India is a complex and big market.

Payment platforms are being used as a gateway for customer acquisition and data collection, which is the bigger opportunity by way of economies of scale. The data sourced and its attributes about consumer behaviour, preferences, basket size and transactions are valuable in shaping products and services. We’re seeing this in the US and Europe, where dominant payment platforms are being able to curate data and monetise it with consumer brands and retail organisations. The combination of Aadhar, UPI, online and mobile payments has led the volume of data to explode in the last 5 years. Organisations have more data than they know what to do with. They need to look at data quality and see how to use this volume of data to drive new decisions and customer insights.

Talent is definitely at the top. Second is how to prioritise investments in transformation and digitalisation, especially in BFSI because capital and talent resources are limited. Data is also a big challenge, especially for long standing companies, because it resides in hundreds of different systems in their application landscape.

The final one is regulatory and compliance. Government and agencies are getting stricter and companies are trying to find the balance between innovating digitally, meeting growing compliance expectations, and mitigating risks with infosec and cyber security. The pace and intensity with which regulatory and compliance requirements are evolving is very high, so a lot of the shifts and initiatives being worked upon are simply to comply with new regulations.

BFSI companies are grappling with how to continue to manage relationship-oriented traditional physical channels while also moving online through pure D2C models, mobile apps and online interactions. For customer facing BFSI companies, mobile apps and online interactions are a ‘must have’ and no longer a ‘nice-to-have’. Consumers too are not looking to interact purely digitally or in-person, and so BFSI companies need to enable an omni-channel experience, which is being seen as a differentiator versus a purely digital native financial services startup.

However, the skills, talent and technologies required to power those channels are very different, and that’s why we’re seeing digital investment levels growing exponentially. Companies are hiring more and technology teams are no longer back office IT but very core, strategic and closely integrated with other lines of business–equivalent of R&D teams in pharmaceutical companies. There are massive investments in cyber security, infotech and data privacy, both for regulatory compliance and protection, safeguarding and risk mitigation. Not just here, even in the US and Europe. and it’s a continuous effort. A growing amount of portfolio allocation, about 5-15 per cent of the tech budgets, is towards cyber security.

There are a lot of people available but the specific skills and talent required is still a constraint. BFSI companies are competing with digital native and IT companies for the same software engineers.

Also, a big theme emerging is ‘do more with less’. Indian companies have been good at being lean because of the human power and tech talent available. The traditional thinking was to throw more people at an issue. But they are now realising that it is no longer an option because labour costs have gone up, there is inflation and digital initiatives allow for getting things done faster. So there is a lot of focus on developing in-house competencies and having a network of contractors that they can tap into for supplemental talent.

It is posing more constraints. The biggest challenge is that regulations around this are very fluid, and changing and evolving very quickly. We work with global customers, and meeting regulatory data requirements across Europe GDPR, US, India, Singapore and Australia is definitely becoming more challenging. Over time, will have to go beyond country-specific regulations to a more global standard. Conversations around that are starting, but it is going to require participation and collaboration, which makes it complex. Technology is not the underlying issue, it’s getting different countries and regulators on the same page.