A: Technology has a critical role to play in providing our customers the best services in a user-friendly manner. IT, essential to timely delivery of services, also plays an important role in managing the quality of business, and profitability. Managing credits, reliability, asset liability and risk are some of the aspects of profitability. At the same time pooling data from the thousand of branches, and ensuring that this data is consolidated and can be used for the purpose of analysis, interpretation and taking informed decisions is what I expect from IT.

IT must design systems that provide operational flexibility. Only then can innovative ideas translate quickly to changes in products and services for customers. I have always viewed technology as an enabler. It facilitates rapid growth while enhancing the service experience to our customers. I expect IT to deliver on all the project initiatives that help meet this objective in a timely and cost-effective manner.

On Governance and Transparency: A robust IT infrastructure is also vital to good governance and transparency. One of the tasks IT has is to help a company configure the systems that will enable better governance. With such systems in place, the scope of manual interventions is reduced and so are the problems associated with them.

Internally, we look at IT to ensure better practices, faster dissemination of information, and better management of our finances. This also supplements the efforts of others within the organisation and helps them realise that there exists an environment of good governance supported by quick and accurate information flow.

A: We have always focused on inclusive growth, in terms of business and employment opportunities in all the markets where we operate. Customers in the low-income groups have proved to be a catalyst to step up rural growth. Hiring local candidates has also helped us gain the trust of customers and business associates.

The company currently drives more than 80 percent of volumes from rural markets and we have tapped around 2,00,000 villages through 500 branches.

With rural market growing at 30 to 35 percent and with liquidity in the hands of the farmers, we decided that the rural focus had to be stepped up to expand business volumes. The growth in the rural markets has also helped the company bring in more people into the credit system.

A: The company has offered 5,000 hand-held devices that are connected by GPRS to a central server that offers information to handle customer queries for our collection executives.

This also enables better internal checks and controls. Our monthly receivables are around 500 crore rupees, of which more than 80 percent is in cash. Around 91 percent of the total 500 branches are online.

Besides collecting cash, we also provide services to customers in terms of providing statement of accounts, calculating internal rate of return (IRR) through mobile branches. We are designing products according to the needs of the consumer, keeping in mind that there would be huge volumes involved.

A: Yes, we have applied for a license for setting up an asset management company, and expect an in-principle approval by the end of this financial year. We have one million customers and we are adding 25,000-30,000 customers each month. We don’t want to miss the opportunity to take financial products to this market.

In terms of IT, our branches are geared up with the latest technology systems and some of them already function as a standard bank branch office.