For The Entrepreneurs

Sumedha Salunkhe Naik’s entrepreneurial journey began due to the acute lack of understanding of entrepreneurs in the industry. “Especially the ones with smaller enterprises within the financial institutions,” she says, adding, “The entire loan seeking process for them was unpleasant. They were almost all shunted and isolated from financial credit. That got me thinking that the problem was less with them and more with us as lenders.”

This led to the creation of Syntellect. The company’s mission was to reimagine and redefine credit assessment for financial inclusion for those who are new to banking, credit, dark data informal sector customer using its flagship product RightProfile.

“I wanted to create an unbiased and scientific way to profile small enterprises and be the path to their first steps in financial inclusion. It was clear that the way forward was to create a product and govern it myself. And the only way to evolve the product from a one-to-one to one-to-many was by creating a financial technology product which solves mass appeal problems,” Naik informs.

The company’s journey has not been an easy one. But technology is mainstay to Syntellect’s way forward. “Our commitment to reimagine credit for our customer segment can only be achieved with technology. The marriage of mobility solution, artificial intelligence (AI) driven scoring algorithms such as advanced AI based analytics of customer microsegments will enable us to address the needs of this customer and create a world of financial opportunities for her and her business,”says Naik.

In its way forward, Syntellect also intends to take RightProfile to other markets. Given its features and technology stack, RightProfile is location and geography agnostic. “It is customised for each enterprise, depending on their requirements and is a part of their online system. It helps the lending institution by providing a scientific case assessment at the customer acquisition stage and reducing the overall acquisition cost. We plan to commit to other geographies grappling with similar challenges,” elaborates Naik.

Part of Syntellect’s growth strategy is to form deeper partnerships in the future, with the ultimate goal of increasing efficiencies in financial inclusion. Naik explains, “These cannot be improving if all stakeholders compete with each other. It is our ambition to partner with government agencies, the regulator and lenders and make these collaborations deliver a level of personalisation and excellence to the process.”

The Highs
RightProfile has now evolved from a standalone product to being an integrated solution with intelligent API’s. Syntellect has layered AI in RightProfile from analytics to image recognition. Calling the product’s evolution with changing customer segment and lender needs as one of the company’s most satisfying moments, Naik states, “Today when I see us embed AI in RightProfile to automate the categorization of the thin file customer depending on their risk profile, from low to high and I see the lender resource empowered with an instantaneous assessment of her or his potential clients profile ,which subsequently allows him to craft a sanction, I feel a sense of accomplishment.”