Chairman
MindCraft Software
MindCraft, which is a premier industry vertical specific company, provides business edge to clients through world class technology products and services. Hemant Nerurkar, Chairman of MindCraft Software, shares this and much more with Elets News Network (ENN) about his company.
As your organisation’s vision is to provide world class technology products and services, what solutions do you presently have to cater to banks’ needs?
Today, banks are inundated with the need to innovate on account of global trends, regulatory changes and stakeholder demands. These growing pressures have made it imperative for banks to constantly evolve. MindCraft provides products and solutions that enable banks to manage huge business volumes, monitor risk, improve TAT etc. PayCraft is one of the first products we had developed. It is a highly scalable platform for processing bulk and online remittance transactions received from Exchange Houses across the globe.
PayConnect is an integrated payment hub that helps banks keep track of all their domestic payment transactions. It is a centralised payment processing solution supporting all electronic payment systems such as RTGS, NEFT, NACH, IMPS, SWIFT etc. It provides real-time tracking of all payments processed.
Aurum is a loan origination system that automates the entire lending cycle of the loan process. It also includes contractual reporting obligations, process modelling, and automated reports among other features.
Another solution we have is MetRisk, which is a risk monitoring solution that delivers the risk exposure of an organization at an Enterprise level. Developed primarily for the insurance and mutual fund industry, the solution is also available for various types of treasury operations.
There are a number of other projects, namely Kiosk Banking, development of banking applications on Facebook, BPM, Business Analytics, API implementation and MIS dashboards with drill-down capabilities on KPIs that we have successfully executed.
Which one of your 10 main solutions has maximum demand in the banking and financial sector?
Kindly tell us about your PayCraft and SalesCtrl solutions. Given the complexities in the remittance business, PayCraft is a solution that we see a lot of demand for. In their quest to be better prepared to manage risk and improve forecasting, we are also seeing an increasing demand for services around Business Analytics and BPM.
With regards to our remittance solution, PayCraft has ready out-of-the box support for over 42 exchange houses in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region. This solution can help banks not only reduce costs related to foreign remittance but it can also help them increase their customer base.
SalesCtrl, on the other hand, is a cross industry product developed by us. It is an opportunity management tool that captures and monitors the right information, from identification to closure and can be used by companies, irrespective of the industry vertical to which they belong. It has been developed primarily for the SME segment especially for companies in the services industry to help them bring about efficiency in their sales process.
Can you share names of some of your prominent clients?
What feedback have you received from them? MindCraft’s clientele includes some of the largest Indian companies in the BFSI sector, like Axis Bank, Avantha Ergo Life Insurance, Bombay Stock Exchange, Birla Sun Life Insurance, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, ICICI Prudential, Kotak Bank, NCDEX, NSDL, Ratnakar Bank, Reliance Life Insurance, SBI Life Insurance, Tata AIA Life Insurance, Yes Bank etc. We are proud of the long-term relationship we share with our clients.
We are often considered to be the right-sized partner by our clients. We are large enough to provide a wide range of solutions and services that cater to the complete IT requirements of our customers. At the same time, we are small enough to give executive attention to each client engagement. Our clients have often pointed out that our speed to respond and the flexibility to adapt to change makes us a dependable and scalable partner.
What are the main challenges being observed in the Indian banking and finance sector on the technological front?
Banks adopted technology very early, about 20 years ago. Initially, the focus was on branch automation. Later, it changed to Core Banking. After this, the development and adoption of technology by the RBI was so fast that banks found it very difficult to cope up with. Hence, most banks in India have a huge number of applications. The current challenge is to Integrate all these applications. Documenting them and “service discovery” is another.
In two to three years, the whole patchwork will start getting “refreshed”. Large players could offer “Information Technology” on per transaction basis. Large Multinational Banks, mainly in the US, are looking at this option today.
The fact is that all financial services companies, including banks, are finding it increasingly difficult to justify IT costs. As a first step, all secondary data could move out to service providers. In the long run, most businesses, including financial services, will have IT providers who will manage the entire show for a cost per transaction.
We are large enough to provide a wide range of solutions and services that cater to the complete IT requirements of our customers.
Why was your organisation given the ‘IBM Client Value Innovation Award’?
What is its significance? We have been working closely with IBM for over 12 years. We have contributed a lot to IBM and to our customers by selling IBM licenses and building solutions using the IBM platform. These days, the game is changing a bit. We need the solution before the customer will consider buying licenses. We have adapted to this change and helped IBM sell their platform to a variety of customers. Due to our solutions, it has been easier for us to consistently renew the licenses. IBM has always been very keen to ensure that the customers actually use their products and generate value for their organisations. We have been instrumental in helping IBM achieve this goal.
