Women are often identified as consumers of market goods, but seldom recognized for their ability to create products, enhance product- quality & product development so customers get the best customer- experience. Rati Shetty, Chief Product Officer & Co-founder, BankBazaar.com, is one such woman- entrepreneur who began her entrepreneurial journey with BankBazaar nine years ago.
“Having been born into a family of entrepreneurs, the inclination to be one myself has always been there. I have always been keen on learning and gravitated towards it when a good opportunity presented itself. My entrepreneurial journey with BankBazaar has been extremely rewarding in that respect,” said Rati Shetty while talking about her journey in a conversation with BW Businessworld. “From personally experiencing first-hand the tedious and time-consuming Home Loan application process back in 2007 to identifying the needs of loan seekers and striking the right online solution to enable loan seekers to find the best offer and alleviate application process pain points led to the launch of BankBazaar in 2008.”
BankBazaar has come a long way since a tiny six-member team with an office in Chennai and two partner banks to a 1000-strong team with offices in three more locations in India, and overseas expansion into Singapore and 85+ banking partners. All this backed by funding from Amazon, Sequoia, Walden, Fidelity and Mousse Partners.
“Today, I’m happy to be at the helm of things as the Chief Product Officer of a company that I’m very proud to say is making an impact and providing much-needed solutions to various customer challenges when it comes to accessing financial products. The learning continues even today as we strive to keep bettering our customer experience,” Rati added.
The reason BankBazaar exist in this space is to streamline the painful process of taking a Home/Car/Personal Loan, Credit Card or Mutual Fund product from days or weeks into an instant. The company is continuously enabling this on all its platforms – web and mobile ¬– fortified by a fantastic customer experience on the product and backed by really smart, reliable technology.
Commenting on the future plans she kept in the mind, Rati added, “We continue to be dedicated towards delivering clean, clutter-free and simple product experiences through smart technology, including innovations such as paperless transactions and instant approval/disbursal, as well as intelligent interface design. We’re the #1 Fintech Company through a dedicated focus on innovative technology and design. We’d like to continue with that focused approach so as to help customers access the right financial product while also having a great user experience.”
Rati is responsible for the customer experience on BankBazaar.com. Prior to founding BankBazaar.com, Rati spent a few years working for Kraft Foods in the US and Taiwan and managed the launch and go to market operations of many of Kraft Food’s brands in export markets across the world.
At the end, Rati also spoke about the consumer trends and insights in Fintech, she stated, “The scope for products and services offered by Fintech firms is growing rapidly. It won’t be just limited to lending or money transfers or payment applications etc. There’s an emerging shift away from addressing just traditional banking activities to a far broader engagement across a customer’s financial journey with new personalised services that include a wide spectrum of financial services, be it retail, money management, wealth management, insurance and so forth.
With the renewed emphasis on digitisation in India, post demonetisation, we’ll see innovations in digital lending, digital cash management, payment infrastructure, cyber security, IoT, and linked devices, and one-stop shops for personal finance management that go beyond pure banking.”
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