Co-founder CEO, Karza Technologies
In the age when data security and credibility is a major concern, we, at Karza Technologies, provide business and corporate intelligence solutions to banks and financial institutions. We do investigation of the information and provide solutions to our clients, says Omkar Shrihatti, Co-founder CEO, Karza Technologies. Excerpts:
Give us an overview of Karza Technologies and its operations?
Karza Technologies started its operations in 2015 with a prime focus of providing business and corporate intelligence solutions to banks and financial institutions. Banks and financial institutions need to deal with people or companies they don’t know at all.
Only on the basis of few documents, these institutions provide lakhs and crores of loans to them for varied purposes.
This is when Karza Technologies comes into the picture. The aim of our business is to integrate all the information at a place that can be communicated to banks and financial institutions. Our core aim is to enable banks and other financial institutions to take informed decisions before they lend money to anyone or partner with any client or before they invest in any company. So, we are into the business of offering intelligent lending solutions. We basically collate the information and share it with clients.
We also possess readymade profile of various businesses at our end and we keep adding more information as we continue the investigation. We are very soon starting online portal where clients will be able to extract required information themselves.
Kindly share about your clients’ profile?
We are serving about 10 to 12 clients which includes cooperative and government banks. We are also working with NBSCs, corporate and few large cement companies. These companies have subscribed to our services for checking credibility of their foreign vendors and distributors across the country – and other financial institutions. We also work with two or three consulting firms and assist foreign companies by helping them in identifying the credibility of companies before they enter into a joint venture in India.
InstaKYC is one of your prominent applications. Will you please update us on the advantages on this application?
It is a cloud-based KYC validation tool which assists banks to validate and store 15+ acceptable KYC documents of all their customers in real time directly through government sources. It addresses the most simple but one of the most crucial issues that banks face today – KYC. RBI has penalised several cooperative banks for violating KYC norms and these cooperative banks – more than 40 of them – had to pay about 2 crores as the penalty for non-compliance. InstaKYC assist banks in validating the very basic information about their customers. This information is authenticated directly from government databases. Further, the application also allows centralised monitoring of data which was not possible before and it allows refreshing the KYC information in a more convenient manner.
Tell us about R & D in Karza Technologies.
In Karza Technologies, Research and development happens on two fronts – first crucial part is to identify right sources where the information can be collected from. Our team has spent about 7 to 8 months in identifying these sources. We use the data which is available in public domain. We have a team of efficient chartered accountants who have experience of collecting and validating information of individuals and companies. Second element is to study the loan fraud cases. We have personally investigated thousands of fraud cases to understand how fraud happens and how people cheat banks and the fake documents are used to cheat banks. We have invested a lot of time and money in investigating these cases.
What are the challenges you face?
The major problem is the way the databases are maintained. Each department and organisation maintains the data in their own fashion and there is no uniqueness amongst all of these institutions. This is when Karza Technologies comes into the picture. Despite the disparity in government databases, we – by using our expertises –get all the data in standardised and unified manner. So, you have profile of a customer or a particular business in a standardised style. This is the primary challenge we face.
What are your expansion plans? Are you planning to expand your team?
We may not be expanding our team beyond 15 – 16 people in near future. However, we will certainly grow our business in different geographies to other parts of the nation. We have started our business in Mumbai and Maharashtra and moving forward, we will be expanding our operations in Gujarat, Goa, Karnataka and other parts of India. We aim to have databases and profiles of each and every business in the globe and understand how they are connected with each other.
We are serving about 10 to 12 clients which includes cooperative and government banks. We are also working with NBSCs, corporate and few large cement companies.
How has been the response from the customers?
The larger banks have been able to use such solutions as they are exposed to technological innovation for quite some time now and they are not reluctant to experiment newer concepts and methodologies; however, cooperative banks have not shown enough interest. Cooperative banks are now slowly adopting or planning to adopt new solutions within their banks.
How do you strategise to earn new clients in the market?
Our experience is our biggest strength. We have been in the industry for long and have hands-on experience of investigation and identification mechanism. We know how people con banks and financial institutions. Further, we have eminent experts on the board who guide us in making our business effective and easy for clients.
Elets The Banking and Finance Post Magazine has carved out a niche for itself in the crowded market with exclusive & unique content. Get in-depth insights on trend-setting innovations & transformation in the BFSI sector. Best offers for Print + Digital issues! Subscribe here➔ www.eletsonline.com/subscription/
