June 2017

Deciphering Blockchain and Our Future

A LAYMAN GUIDE TO BLOCKCHAIN AND IT’S WORKING…
We undertake a number of contracts & transactions on a daily basis; across regions, countries, industries; as individuals, as small business owners and of course as large corporates. During these transactions, a lot of documents and contracts are created and need to be stored, verified and maintained. We rely on intermediaries and ‘trust’ keepers to see our transaction through safely, seamlessly and without disruption.
Think of the last time you moved money between countries, or paid your supplier in a different country; you had to go through a process of identification and verification at your local bank, there were intermediate banks / clearing houses which assimilated, verified and passed on your information and value (Important!!) before finally, it reached the other end. Often times the ‘trust’ and value you pass on cannot be verified and then your bank calls you up to sort that out and then proceed.
The reality is that all of us have aligned ourselves to these processes, or delays, as part of our life. In fact, we are used to saying – that’s the way it works, and will in the future.
Or will it?
In Dec 1974, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn designed the foundation of our Internet –TCP/IP. Initially, TCP/IP allowed us to connect and send emails, and then it transformed into a wonderful, organic way of communication through a computer at both ends. Today, this has ingrained itself in our daily lives.
And this is what Blockchain, I believe will do. While of course, the final state of the Blockchain revolution is many years away, the process has started. It is important to understand that Blockchain in itself is not disruptive. Blockchain, as I have learned to appreciate, is a foundational technology and will end up creating new foundations for global, economic and social structures. The world will be perceived differently – Pre Blockchain and Post Blockchain perhaps!!!
Blockchain and Core Building Blocks
Blockchain, simply put, is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.
Blockchain, while an innovation, is not a NEW technology – it’s a coming together of three technologies

Distributed, Peer to Peer Network with a shared ledger
Private Key Cryptography
Incentivization Protocol – an incentive to service the network’s transactions, record-keeping and security.

Private Key Cryptography
This component of Blockchain serves to establish one of the key Blockchain concepts – SECURE DIGITAL IDENTITY. Identity is based on a possession of a combination of a public and a private key. The combination of these keys forms a very useful digital signature.
Distributed Network
This component technology helps in APPROVING TRANSACTIONS THROUGH CONSENSUS and MAINTAINING A TRUSTED SHARED RECORD
When a node (A) initiates a transaction with another node (B) in the Blockchain, by the very nature of the protocol, a new block is added to the record (Ledger). Since this ledger is shared by all the nodes in the blockchain, the next step is for these nodes to start validating the transaction to verify if indeed A has the funds for e.g. to transfer to B. Validating the transaction involves going back to the 1st transaction (block) in the chain and accounting for every transaction in the chain, before arriving at a confirmation on the transaction’s genuineness. Once a majority of the nodes verify this new transaction and confirm, it’s then that the new transaction is added to the system of records (a new Block is confirmed and added to the chain).
Incentivization
The integrity of the blockchain requires many participants to be constituting the peer to peer distributed network (and consequentially the very high-power consumption). One of the cleverest parts of the BTC blockchain is its incentive for participating in the expensive consensus-building process. Every time a new block is accepted, the system randomly rewards one participant with a reward or token. In a Bitcoin Blockchain, this is how new Bitcoins are created or “mined”.

Smart Shopping Assistant

Many of us do online shopping / offline – Showroom purchase, How about having a Smart Shopping Assistant from Bank using AI and Analytics, which can advise us instantly anywhere and anytime 24×7. Customer generally need advice on following

What to Buy? -Choice
When to Buy? – Offer / Holiday Season Sale
Is it worth Buying? – Utility of the Product
How to buy? – Based on Price / Financial Strength of the Buyer

Let’s see some basic Use Case of a Buyer doing Offline Showroom Purchase.
Mr. John wants to Visit an Electronic Showroom nearby his Residence to purchase an SLR Camera.
Smart Shopping Assistant APP:

Asks John to select the Product he intends to buy. (Example: SLR Camera)
Provides the list of Showroom available nearby his Residence along with Google route map.
John selects Shop No.1 and proceeds his travel.

What to Buy from the available Choice:
App provides the SLR camera with different Specification, John selects one from it. (Choice of Specification)
App provides the SLR camera across Brands with price (Choice of Brand & Price)
When to Buy to avail best offer:
App provides an ALERT to John stating the Current Offer prices is not competitive against the forthcoming Christmas Holiday Season Offer, which is 10% more.
App provides an ALERT, if John proceeds to buy, he can avail the Credit Card Offer which is 6% on top of the showroom offer.
The app can provide an ALERT, that SHOP no.2 which is 1 km away is having the same product and the offer is 1% more than the Shop no.1.
Is it worth Buying?:
The app captures the last purchases made by John through online / offline and does an Analysis, that John already bought a similar type of SLR Camera with a lower specification. Suggest him that you already have a camera. Do you really want to buy? Also suggest him, that it was recently bought 4 months back.
App advice John to sell the previous camera in a resale portal or postpone the buying of new SLR camera.
This feature will provide assistant to User, as to whether the product is really useful buy / hint him that already similar product is bought, which may or may not be used. In general, a consumer buys just because to avail the offer but do not use it.
How Do I buy?:
The app can check the Account balance of John and advice if he has sufficient balance to purchase based on a future commitment like EMI, Standing Instructions, Bill Payment.
The app can suggest John to Avail Credit Card offer of Zero % EMI or advice him that he still has a unutilized limit on the credit card, which is cheaper than utilizing his Account balance.
This feature helps John to assess his financial commitment and options, finally whether to buy or not.
Conclusion:
Using AI and Analytics, System can advise a customer on Purchase through analyzing Location, Product, Product Specific Offers, Seasonal Offers, Financial commitment/strength of the consumer. This feature can help consumer take an advised decision on purchase, instead of some random purchase, ending up in defaulting EMIs or overshooting his spending limit.

The Chicken and Egg story: Unreasonable demands on a Vendor and Failed promises of an Employer

The other day, a client of mine called me up and sounded quite livid at a high profile fintech company. His son passed out of the college a few months back and was offered a lucrative job by this fintech startup. After about 4-5 months of frequent shuffling across stop-gap work and training, he was asked to quit. On the other hand, his other friends who were not as ‘lucky’ as he was in the college placements and got just passable openings with other companies were in a better position as they did not face any such threat as yet.
My client was devastated emotionally and wanted a shoulder to cry on, perhaps. He felt that the Indian IT companies were playing with the careers of the youth. These companies mismanage their work; they overestimate their business projections for short-term gains; they hoard the best possible students from elite colleges without having enough business in hand and then leave them in the lurch.
While I empathized with him, I did not want to take the complete blame on my community of IT companies. While it may sound too cruel, I thought it was my opportunity to speak out and give him a chance to correct himself – when he negotiates a deal with me the next time.
After listening to him patiently for about 15 minutes, I took him back to a recent transaction that we had. I reminded him of the project wherein after a year-long negotiation and after keeping me on tenterhooks for all through that period, he finally gave his nod to start the project. And as he issued his purchase order, he wanted the project to start within a week’s time. And then what did he do when I could not put up a team within that short time? He escalated the matter to my COO. That indicates that he expected me to keep the team with me without any gainful work.
I explained to him as to how the evaluation process goes on for an excessively long time without any clarity on the closure. The vendors keep building and releasing their teams assuming the start of a project, which remains elusive. Some established players are able to carry this weight of unproductive workforce for a long period but a few smaller vendors end up burning their reserves on this unreasonably long wait. The employer of his son would be one such company suffering at the hands of his own community.
A good practice followed by the professional companies is to plan their business well in advance. As the highly ambitious revenue projections come in for the following year, the recruitment planning too starts. In order to outdo their competitors, these companies make a beeline to the graduate schools at the earliest. So much so that the candidates get recruited almost a year before they complete their course. And then, if the business projections don’t add up for some reasons, the process breaks down. It starts with delays in offer letters; even if on boarding happens, it ends up in a painful separation after a short while.
So, the entire system has deteriorated over a period. The corrections are required on multiple counts. As the apex body of software companies in India, NASSCOM should take some responsibility to bring in behavioural corrections, I suppose. It is best to induce self-restraint rather than expecting an external intervention.
Can the clients engage these software companies to be more reasonable with their demands? Will they bring in more transparency on their expenditure budgets? Will they refrain from making up for all their delays with unreasonable demands on timelines for delivery? Could these Individuals grow above their conceited considerations? Will the Education Department issue a guideline against entertaining campus interviews so much in advance?
Or whether the NASSCOM can issue a guideline to the member companies to refrain from early recruitment. With seasoned professionals managing these member organizations, I am sure they do not need a RERA like regulatory framework. For, the problem is not much different from that. Recruiting a year in advance, without a clear visibility of the business, is in a way comparable to the ‘pre-launch’ irregularities of the real estate sector that RERA has tried to arrest.

Collaboration in IOT landscape – the buzz and the big thing

We are in cusp of a digital revolution, and one of the transformation factor is “The Internet of Things” (IoT). The influence and the innovation that it can power machine-to-machine collaboration would alter the way we live, do business and the impact it will have in our society.
A smart interconnected world is emerging through intuitive devices, which can make our lives healthier, less stress free, dedicate more time to a better lifestyle, safer drives, contactless payments and predictable aspects of life.
Is there Value to Banks to embrace IOT?
Banks have already started their journey of digital revolution, with technology driving the way Banking is done today. The entire business value chain is increasingly getting stitched today with corporations, retail houses, distribution channels, startups collaborating to achieve results.
Bar code scanners, biometric devices, cameras, sensors help banks to track, send triggers to various relevant systems based on positional and location of action. These could be tracking of location wherein the product is being created, goods being shipped, sales at a dealer site, promotion offer provided by dealer in partnership with a bank, offer provided to a customer based on his reward score, risk score of customer and his target set as part of investment Goals. The whole predictability to increase the sales for all business participants in the value chain further increases. Manufacturing company can increase the product output, banks can further provide credit to dealers and hence prospects are better for high quality products and services.
The business scenarios on usage of IoT is immense, these devices can be involved in Warehouses handling order and storage management and Banks’ lending to these warehousing companies as part of business expansion.
Customer centricity through IOT by Banks:
Vast collection of data and exchange of information in a streamlined and seamless fashion through collaboration of machines brings in great value to Banks and Financial institutions. The new level of understanding of customer behaviors’ and patterns will help Banks to enhance personalized experience, excellent offers and targeted products and services. It will also promote innovation in banks, create efficient operations, enhance security features and increase cross-sell opportunities for Banks.
Scenario of IOT in action: at an Airport check-in desk, a frequent flyer customer is excited by the offer of an upgrade to a higher class seat. The bar code scanner at the desk has identified the customer as a frequent flyer, connected to systems on the network to check his Air Miles availability. It also connects to customer’s bank account to check for existing Reward points in the customer relationship account (Savings Account, Credit card, Insurance plans etc.,) to convert them to additional Air Miles and generate this offer. The effective use of these rewards could be achieved through IOT at the center of action. Customer’s home bank and the Airline also benefits as an industry with delighted customers and a stable customer base. This is the usage of IOT for best financial decision taken.
Based on the social media data, spending patterns and customer’s goal planning objectives, Banks based on customer preference & acceptance can provide great financial advices. It could vary from offering Customers best price deal and loan offer on residential or commercial properties with credit assessment already done by bank before this offer is published. Providing advice to customers to save money through Mutual funds through SIP, or on debt based instruments in case, the Credit risk of Customer is high.
In all these cases, data tracked by IoT machines are managed over the network and storage. The data will then move seamlessly faster across systems and channels to play a key role in IOT collaboration and productivity.
Necessity is the mother of Innovation:
Banks to increase their asset growth would be keen to expand their Loan book, hunting for agriculture based farms, micro industries and enterprises. Banks are wary of Non-Performing assets (NPA) which is prevalent in today’s industry. To tide with this problem and still move ahead, IOT can be a platform of collaboration. A view on this aspect is illustrated as an example.
In an Agriculture based farming scenario, sensors and devices can be utilized to scan and assimilate data on various parameters. The data parameters could be availability of resources such as quality seeds, water, fertilizers and data on weather forecasts, which has a direct bearing on quality of crops and crop yields.
So there is a new avenue for business to emerge for startups and technology firms to create smart apps and solutions to build utilizing this data from the IOT platform and create patterns, use cases and specific action for each task. Banks can further fund these startups and create a business model out of these. The agriculture products sold by the farm to their dealers and distributors can utilize the Banking platform for payments and for expansion growth. With this we see an ecosystem emerge of Banks, enterprises, startups and finally consumers.
The Technology side to IOT:
Internet Protocol version (IPv6) is one of the backbone component that provides identification and location for devices on network and handles internet traffic. The hardware component of IoT, is built on Wireless systems on a chip. This utilizes protocols such as TCP, UDP and IP. IoT also uses operating system which is based on a microkernel. The IoT landscape combines data brokers, cloud computing services, network of data gathering sensors to have a high scalable runtime environment.
This also throws up security challenges to securely manage sensitive data, which could be a target while it is stored or while it moves over network. To ensure the mobile phones, connected cars, RFID devices in a connected collaborative environment are safe; encryption and authorization would play a big role. Biometrics information such as fingerprints, voice-recognition, facial recognition, Iris scanners and new password combinations would spearhead to identify and authenticate the users securely. This is important to gain trust of customers and security is a key building block in IoT landscape.
This is a huge fundament shift IoT is driving the innovation across businesses and is becoming an integral part of IT infrastructure. As we see, the World’s first hybrid ‘aeroboat’ capable of travelling on land, water, snow and sand designed by Indo-Russian Joint venture has been launched. The company has equipped the aeroboats with IoT technology, to remotely monitor, control and diagnose the equipment. These vehicles are used in disaster management activities.
References/Sources:

Beatitudes of Customer Experience

Banking as an industry was one of the most thriving industries from the industrialization era or even before. It has been the cornerstone of many key transformational initiatives in the global economic construction. As a young lad, I would still remember me being taken to the bank, just to help me understand banking processes and meet the wonderful people that worked there. The typical mindset was that bankers were highly informed and influential people, a healthy relationship with them was but imminent. It was thus a relation built on a foundation of trust with fewer customers- largely local supported by cozy branches.
This industry was largely insulated from larger disruption and often fiercely protected by the country’s regulator. It is probably this protectionism that injected complacency. Banks grew to be more internally focused, driven by a set of factory like processes, supported by technology that manufactured products at a phenomenal pace. Customer progressively took a backseat in bank’s design of products and services, which was increasing driven by profit and other internal consideration.
Over the years this has changed, globalization has brought with it many new banks with vividly skilled bankers, robust stock markets that drove up banking stocks, financial technology companies that have simple means to disintermediate revenues in niche areas, technology platforms that have helped banks create newer complex products and services and digitalize operations, and also brought scale – laying the foundation to mass yet differentiated banking. Is this a new phenomenon that has taken banking off-guard, off course not, it is the pace at which it is happening and the support to the changes from regulators that has set the alarm bells ringing.
We often blame the fluid regulatory environment, the advent of fintechs and other external factors for increasing pressures on margin and profitability among banks. While that is partially correct, there are many levers within the bank’s locus of control that are often unused or abused. Some of such misadventures include -Organization structure and Lines of businesses being created to accommodate people’s growth aspirations and not synergy, Innovation being compartmentalized and localized to a team without an org-wide participation, New products and services often being conceptualized with internal and existing capabilities as constraints, mindless automation driving more complexity and escalated commitment, islands of excellence being created and nurtured without an pan organization view of future innovation and growth, KYC( Know Your Customer) being treated in an abject sense of regulatory requirement and not as a way to truly understand the customer, cross sell and up-sell targets that have but applied a lot of pressure on the integrity of the bank relationship managers leading to miss-sell without having to worry about being tracked and penalized for wrong actions. These are just some of the reasons for many of the self-inflicted injuries that banks have brought upon themselves, they certainly have impacted trust and created an experience deficit between them and the customer.
By now you would appreciate the fact that customer experience is not skin deep, it is driven by a nexus of forces and is in effect the summation of various interactions, transactions and engagement that a customer has been having with the bank. So the question is, is there a ready formula that banks can adapt in their path to Customer Experience (CX) transformation? Unfortunately NOT, every bank today needs to bear its own cross on its path to superior customer experience. However, what I call the Beatitudes of CX transformation can be those sign boards or golden rules that can help in providing some guidance
Beatitudes of CX Transformation

Reinvent the banking design point – do not be constrained
Lay eyes on the matrices – to define and gauge success
Get the data foundation right and a construct to glen insights
Let your employees be your ambassadors of change
Resist the temptation of incremental market adjustments
Chart the customer journey and set a feedback loop with real customers
Create trusted partnerships and avoid transactional relationships
Look beyond your industry

Listing of each one of these beatitudes is a result of my experience working with clients across the globe in my own journey as a consultant and have real stories attached with them, that I would love to share. Stay connected as I write on each one of these – giving my humble view of what these mean, how we get it right, what are the methods that banks can employ and what are the pitfalls one need to be aware of.
Do feel free to share your experiences that can enrich the unfolding story…

3 Things We Could Learn From Startup Talents

When I started my career, one of the many requirements for a job is technical or business domain skills. Along with the career development, communication and management skills had turned to play a more important role.
While I fully embraced and welcomed advances in technology and banking industry in last 15 years, now comes the age of Fintechs and startups. As a product strategy manager, I spent last 2 years dealing with Fintechs. The more I engaged with them, the more I was impressed by their people – even the biggest fintech firms are supported by with a relative skeleton crew. There are so many things to talk about these startup talents. Besides passion and enthusiasm, today, I would like to highlight three things we could learn from these talents, three things that make these startups unique and successful.
All In
Entrepreneurs fight to build and save a company. So does its employees.
All In is more than just an attitude resists the temptation of backup options. It is a lifeline for startup staffs who are thinking about launching a new idea and a new product. Given the scarce resource, if they can’t find a way to turn the startup around in the next several months, cash might be burned to zero and the company will be forced to shut down.
All In certainly does not mean to put every efforts and investment in one basket. But it holds the keys to strive our best in the new digital economy and achieve the success of innovation. However, in a big organization, such as Infosys, we are lucky enough to be offered with many alternatives in our decision making. The flip side of this, by human nature, is we many times choose to stay in a comfortable “renew” zone without dedicating ourselves to make “new” things happen. Unfortunately, dedication and consistency are among those characters we need most to succeed in innovation.
Full Stack
A full stack developer is someone capable of performing tasks at any level of the technical stack: OS, server, programming, and even UX design. More than just a technical perspective, a full stack startup talent can do sales, business consulting, and technical presentation in different scenarios. I have seen a Fintech CEO presenting business value, talking about technology integration specs, and discussing commercial terms in one conference call – and he nailed it very well! Instead, there were 8 people from our side in the call and still, we called extra resource to support the discussion.
Of course, it’s unfair to refer a Fintech CEO as the requirements of a regular employee of a traditional technology company. However, in a broader context, full stack means being pushed outside of our comfort zone to constantly learn new skills. Full stack means a spirit of doing innovation by changing ourselves to adapt to multiple roles – always ready to accept new challenges. And, full stack means to keep us cool and sexy in the industry, and so does to our business.
Agility
Agility is the ability to rapidly respond to change. Although agility is one of the key principles to achieve success in a digital world, it is usually a character that a big company lacks. Can traditional organizations achieve the same speed and agility as a startup? Maybe not. Can an employee of a traditional technology company or a bank be equipped with a similar level of agility as startups? Certainly yes. In many cases, agility is not a matter of process or culture. It is a matter of individual will to think out of the box, and to strive to make change a routine part of organizational life to solve problems.
No pain no gain. In this brave new world, it is critical to have talents that with all-in passion, that can constantly learn new skills, and be able to break a routine part of the process. These are important characters of startup employee that we could learn to make us, and the company success in a digital world.