Being There For The Ecosystem Equally Important: Udita Pal

In an interview with BW Businessworld, Udita Pal (co-founder of SALT) speaks on how her company makes business banking across borders easier and goes beyond the obsession of competition with a vision of building a great financial ecosystem that thrives with innovation and collaboration.

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How does SALT help facilitate better opportunities across borders?

Business banking is complicated. Cross-border business banking is even more complicated. So instead of making people run around Googling 500 things on the internet, talking to a CA, a lawyer, CS, 500 founders, investors, just to figure out one transaction - we built an automated process, which takes care of everything. 

Our product is divided into two parts. One part of it is that we enable small businesses or enterprises to quickly transfer their money and automate whatever other legal compliances that come with it. So, with SALT, all you have to do is get done with your transaction and relax. On the other hand, we provide another product that helps with the FDIs, which are coming in to India. We help them with the paperwork, give them a fantastic rate, automate the entire process so that they don't have to juggle around with five different people to get one transaction right. This allows them to focus on what they will be needed to do when the money comes in.

Could you tell us about the technology that powers SALT?

We actually took the best out of everything that we have ever experienced from multiple places. We felt that automation of documents was great, so, we got inspired for it from one place. We got inspired for having the top-notch account management system from another place. And we got inspired by a neo-banking dashboard from one place, and then we brought it all together. That is the kind of approach we have had at SALT. Although the technology is not new, bundling it the right way is something that sets us apart. 

You spoke on the lack of collaboration opportunities in the fintech space and how the competition is killing the process of innovation in brief during the Festival of Fintech 2022 by BW Businessworld. Would you like to speak on this?

I have seen that there is a certain surge in competition and it's not coming from the right place. It's coming from a place of insecurity. It's coming from a place of jealousy and envy. By now, I have seen so many people not speaking about who their financial institutions are, who their partner banks are. At SALT, we are targeting a USD 300 billion industry and I don't think we can take care of that industry all alone. So, I believe we should not be scared of sharing our contacts because ultimately our end goal is the same and we can work together on achieving it. I have seen that people are not sharing and this has been true, especially for startups in the last two to three years. While there are a lot of startups who have come out and shared, I've also seen a lot of toxic competition. And that is one of the leading factors due to which positive innovation is not happening. It’s because we are so busy demeaning and defaming each other that we forget that our whole purpose was to build something for the ecosystem. 

How does SALT distinguish itself from others in the space?

I am super proud of building and bringing together our banking solution which was not easy. Initially, we kind of started getting customers, but we were not able to serve them. So, we went ahead and let our competitors have our customers. We introduced them. We were the warm connect because we didn't have the infrastructure to be able to serve the customers. It did hurt a little bit, but to us serving the customer was far more important than being obsessed with the competition. 

For us, even in our office, we have a list of principles. And our principles state that the customer may not always be right, but they always come first. We have had multiple instances where we couldn't serve the customers because we were not the right channel partner for them and we have been more than happy to connect them to other people – direct or indirect competitors. We have also followed up with them to make sure that their transaction was done on time and we continue doing that because the greater good that we are targeting is far more important than building something. Being there for the ecosystem is equally important. That is one principle we live by.

(Lightly edited to improve readability)