The Neo-Purists of Banking Delivering superlative CX with eclectic product and service offerings
By Deepa Vaidya
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Virender Bisht, founder & CTO, Niyoand Vinay Bagri, co-founder & CEO, Niyo started with a simple intention in mind."Customers' needs are under-served by the current banking players. Banking has remained the same even as the needs of the market changed. Banks added digital channels but they are nowhere near the e-commerce apps in experience. That is where we saw the opportunity and launched NiyoX in 2015," sayBagri and Bisht.
"Banks have remained focused on P&L more than CX and hence there are a lot of hidden fees, untransparent mechanisms that make the customers pay more than he needs to.Savings and wealth work in silos in banks and have a separate P&L and hence they never created a product that connects the two."
Adding to their USP, they say, "NiyoX offers the best UI/UX, making the experience intuitive and delightful. In addition to this, we are serving the unique needs of young travellers and millennials through our zero mark-up forex card and zero commission mutual funds. There is 24*7 customer service with turnaround time in seconds."
Speaking eloquently about Niyo's differentiators, they say, "The differentiation starts from our proposition of the "007' account.On the savings side, the interest rates are best in the industry and on the wealth side, we are the only neo-banking player which provides zero commission mutual funds.
"On the product side, we are the first player to integrate savings and wealth in our offering, - "Invest the Change'. The feature rounds off the user's transactions and invests it in mutual funds. Thus, the user invests while spending."
"Lastly, we provide 24*7 service to our users unlike most banks which work only in business hours."
Stating the technology behind the innovation, Bisht says, "We use domain micro services, event-driven systems, and observability as core architectural principles. We use a mix of Java, Node, GO, Python, Kotlin, Swift, Flutter as programming languages. Over the years we have achieved CI/CD pipelines that deliver builds to our production instances with high cadence and fast turnaround times".
They are understanding towards working in a sector regulated by the government. They concur,"In their current shape, neo-banks are a layer over banking infrastructure and hence all regulations that apply to banks are mandatory for us too.But regulations don't really complicate things. Infact,we think that regulations are necessary when you are handling money, especially customers' money."
Besides requiring high levels of expertise,working in fintechalso demands immense integrity. Speaking of life's lessons while building a fintech enterprise,they say, "In our experience, trust is the single most important factor while creating a fintech."
NiyoX is as employee-centric as they are customer-focussed. "We have built a culture of customer focus and care for each other at Niyo. Our core values guide us in our way. Along with specific skill-based feedback, we collect feedback on some of the softer, observed soft skills - tone, calmness, repair, etc."
On neobanks foraying into crypto, "Neo-banks are directed by the customer's needs. Considering the pace at which crypto users are growing in the country, we do think that neo-banks need to offer crypto assets in the future."
If Niyo were to start offering crypto," Yes, we have already done considerable work on bringing the crypto and NFTs on our platform. We would be going live immediately after receiving clarity from the regulators and the government in India."
On their expansion plans, the duo says, "We are adding approximately 10,000 users per day and already growing way above the industry averages. We see growth coming from, brand campaigns. We are building the first consumer brand of banking for millennials and young travellers and would invest heavily in marketing to reach our target base."
"Second, we would be creating a full-stack banking solution in NiyoX. Next month, we would be launching personal loans and personal finance management tools in the app. We will be India-focussed for 1-2 years."
