Democratising Tech With Low-Code No-Code

The tech sector is now at the forefront of innovation, propelling humanity into the future of comforts and prosperity. In fact, software has forever changed the growth trajectory of mankind. But did you know that software itself is changing and evolving too?

That’s right, the breakneck speed at which digital transformation is reforming our world is also pushing the envelope of a newer approach in software development, and it is called Low-Code/No-Code.

What Is Low-Code/No-Code?

Traditional software development required programmers to write hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code to create features for applications and software. This needed developers to have deep knowledge of computer languages such as C, C++, Java, and Python. But beyond knowing the programming languages, developers have had to undertake the process of deployment, testing, and even managing servers.

But in the post-pandemic era, Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) development platforms have gotten traction due to their ease of use, allowing developers (professionals and amateurs) to drag-and-drop components to create mobile or web applications apps. This visual medium of software development is now giving wings to many enterprise businesses to build apps swiftly with little to no knowledge of development work.

Burgeoning LCNC Market

According to Gartner, the global LCNC market stood at USD 13.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.1 per cent to USD 37. 2 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, the nascent Indian LCNC market got past USD 400 million in FY21, growing at a CAGR of 15 per cent since FY19 (according to a study by NASSCOM and Nagarro).

Credit: LOW CODE NO CODE- THE INDIA STORY Revolutionizing Software Development, March 2022 – Joint study by NASSCOM-Nagarro

For the Indian LCNC market, 70 per cent of the revenues came in from the global markets, and the ecosystem in the country has about 150 players (the majority being bootstrapped startups). The industries that gravitate towards LCNC in the country are BFSI, Retail, and SaaS, which seem to like the speed at which LCNC accelerate their digital transformation journey.

“LCNC applications are growing increasingly in the BFSI space due to the need for higher efficiencies, faster implementations in IT projects, and the challenges faced in hiring and retaining skilled IT staff,” said Rajashekara V Maiya, VP and Global Head of Business Consulting Group, Infosys Finacle.

For close to 50 years, coding has ruled the rooster of software development. Then, in 2014 Forrester coined the term “Low Code,” and there has been no turning back ever since.

In the digital transformation age, the traditional development model cannot deliver development projects at speed required by businesses and enterprises. Hence, software development has moved away from waterfall methodology to an agile and low-code development model.

“LCNC can be a key advantage with increased competition across sectors and the changing trends in customer requirements. These platforms help businesses achieve their goals fast without compromising on other efforts that go into building valuable products and solutions. With how quick and easy it is to build applications and systems with LCNC, it is no surprise that the market is growing rapidly,” explained Pranatharthi Haran, Managing Director, APAC, Fluent Commerce.

LCNC takes one-third of the time-to-prototyping for clients compared to traditional software development methods while delivering faster time-to-market (50-75 per cent faster launch with pre-coded solutions and customisations on the go). This allows organisations to leverage citizen development to make the development time faster and brings about a reduction of 80-90 per cent CapEx/OpEx. Such numbers are bringing about a massive change in the development space as it is estimated that 80 per cent of technology products and services will be built by those who are not technology professionals by 2024.

Incidentally, India’s BFSI segment, which includes the likes of HDFC, SBI, Kotak, and ICICI, is responsible for 60-70 per cent of revenues for LCNC players. For the BFSI segment in FY21, LCNC saw the highest impact on development time and cost in process-centric use cases in customer apps for the credit card, banking, and customer onboarding.

Credit: LOW CODE NO CODE- THE INDIA STORY Revolutionizing Software Development, March 2022 – Joint study by NASSCOM-Nagarro

“Banks and financial institutions of all sizes and types can benefit tremendously from LCNC tools as it empowers bank staff and branch managers with zero or minimal coding experience to build workflows and systems that can collectively help boost enterprise productivity, clear backlog of IT projects faster, fuel innovation and speed up the launch of new products and services, which is critical today to meet the meet the pace of change in end-customer expectations,” explained Maiya.

PCHFL Leverages Low Code 

Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited (PCHFL), a subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises Limited, with over a million customers and a presence in 24 states, has over 300 branches across India. The company offers multiple products, including home loans and small business loans, to Indian budget-conscious customers at the periphery of metros and in Tier I, II, and III cities.

The company wanted to set a centralised loan origination and management system that would work as a source of data across risk, asset monitoring, compliance, investment, and operations. PCHFL wanted to remove menial and paper-based processes. In addition, the organisation was looking to integrate with fintech players to give an edge to the business, making data-driven decisions for a robust underwriting process.

PCHFL leveraged a host of Microsoft services, including SharePoint Online and SharePoint Framework (SPFx), Azure services, Power Platform, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365, to build a Loan Origination System (LOS) for end-to-end management of loans for its wholesale lending business.

The low-code solution brought in great results for PCHFL as the freshly created LOS helped it manage pre-sanction operations for a book size of Rs 500 billion at its peak. It also streamlined operational activities, eliminated redundant activities, and improved turnaround time for overall sanctioning and certain specific activities of deals like CIBIL data pull, Exposure PPT, PAN verification, etc. by at least 30 per cent across the loan life cycle.

This allowed PCHFL to take credit decisions faster while ensuring adherence to required compliance requirements. Moreover, PCHFL could now extract relevant data points and push them to the data warehouse. Using this information, the company can perform predictive analysis with Azure AI and ML capabilities.

“We are bullish about the opportunities that low code, no code can unlock, and focused on empowering every person and every organisation to do more by rapidly adapting and providing their customers, partners, and employees with streamlined first-class digital experiences on a secure, governable, and scalable platform,” said Praveen Mellacheruvu, Business lead – Business Applications, Microsoft India.

Beyond BFSI

Today, the Indian LCNC market brings 10-15 per cent in revenue from SaaS products and services firms looking to expand into global markets. The new software development platform is also being utilised by several government organisations, including Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), Indian Oil Corporation, Ministry of Finance, Bharat Petroleum, and Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST).

If optimistic projections are to be believed, India could become a USD 4 billion LCNC market by 2025. But NASSCOM predicts that India could be at least a USD 1.1 billion market growing at the current rate.

While LCNC is gaining traction worldwide, there will always be a place for quality software development beyond LCNC. Future businesses will have to dabble in both traditional and LCNC development to build effective and unique business solutions.

“Both low-code and no-code approaches are built with traditional software development programs. Their interface may be easy to understand, but they function on traditional codes, which won’t become obsolete anytime soon,” said Haran.

The future could have more of a hybrid approach to development, indicating that developers would have to lay down the codes and systems in place for businesses to use AI-based LCNC platforms to enable faster deployment of platforms and apps.

(Inputs: LOW CODE NO CODE- THE INDIA STORY Revolutionizing Software Development, March 2022 – Joint study by NASSCOM-Nagarro)