Digital Disruption – Accelerating Product Innovation and Distribution
Narayan Krishnamurthy, Editor, Outlook Money discusses the experience of different organizations on their digital initiatives.
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Transcript
00:00 There is a competitive advantage which is to be gained with digital initiatives and
00:11 it also involves some amount of return on investment that everybody looks at.
00:16 So if you could start as to what has been your experience, maybe Anup if you could start
00:20 as to what has been the experience with iDirect on this aspect.
00:23 I think you know from ICSA direct perspective we have been a digital organization since
00:27 inception and the competitive advantages are well known.
00:32 We continue to be a market leader with a wide margin and I think one of the reasons why
00:36 we are market leader is because we think very differently from the other at that point of
00:40 time traditional brokers.
00:41 Now of course you know there are many people in the market who are doing a good job but
00:44 at that point of time I think we were very different in the way we were thinking, the
00:48 way we were architecting our business and this whole digital thing is as much external
00:52 as it is internal.
00:54 So it's a different way of thinking, it's a different way because you have to think
00:58 of it from a you know customer's perspective.
01:00 There is just no other way of thinking because a digital organization is a very transparent
01:05 organization actually you see it through and through.
01:07 So the product innovation is seen directly by the customer and there is nothing opaqueness
01:12 in between.
01:13 I think this issue of investment depends whether you are born digital or you are becoming digital.
01:18 In a way ICICI direct, I recall when it was coming into being, was consciously born as
01:24 an online platform and you can see many entities today which are in that sense whether it's
01:32 a paytm, many of the wallets and so on that are coming on board which are born digital.
01:37 If you are born digital typically your funding structure, the duration if you like in which
01:44 you are expected to drive ROE, expectations from stakeholders will tend to be a little
01:49 different.
01:50 If you are an incumbent typically you are also protecting existing revenue streams,
01:55 existing franchises.
01:57 Sometimes you have to make decisions about cannibalizing existing revenue streams as
02:01 you accelerate and so on.
02:02 So there is definitely a much more complex set of decisions and you have to try and find
02:08 a way to turn those options into advantages as opposed to encumbrances.
02:12 Then of course, I had mentioned earlier that denial versus forward looking.
02:18 When I look back about a year back in our own organization we felt that we are in the
02:23 19th century as far as technology evolution is concerned which essentially means you need
02:28 to learn and learn a lot of stuff that we perceive that we know and start looking forward.
02:35 Then first and foremost which we did at Birla Sala Mutual Fund, I felt there is a need for
02:38 change in the culture.
02:39 And all of us in the organization have to accept there is a need for us to implement
02:44 lot of stuff around the automations, making process simpler using a technology.
02:48 That is the best way to learn is actually it is learn from the experts.
02:51 We said that in our, when we come out of the app we call it as Birla Sala Life Findgo app.
02:55 When we did that it has to have some kind of differentiated feature for both for the
02:59 distributors and customers to choose.
03:02 And we even think about that whether it can also give some kind of information about the
03:05 competition so that the customer is fully aware about buying the product before buys
03:09 only one of my product.
03:10 With every customer even if we go and sell directly in all fairness I would assume that
03:15 customer is not going to give 100 percent of money to me.
03:19 But you will have an obvious question which will go in his mind if I give Birla Sala Mutual
03:23 Fund say 20 percent or 30 percent of your money then where should I go and put this
03:27 balance in 70 percent.
03:28 So, in any way can I act also, can I act as the, not as an advisor but I can give some
03:34 kind of a clue to the investors for him to decide.
03:36 These are some of the thing which are part of the innovation which we are bringing on
03:38 the table.
03:38 Thank you.