Does Design Thinking and South Indian kitchen’s idli batter have a connection?
A definite yes!
The person who conceptualised the batter to make tiffin recipes must have been a great Design Thinker!
By mixing lentils and rice in the 1/3 and 2/3 proportions, one has a batter that can be used to make three recipes – idli, dosa and uthappam on subsequent days. This not only saves time for food preparation but is healthy as well with its protein and carbohydrate content.
Design Thinking is present in how we have designed our lives both consciously and subconsciously.
“Design Thinking for businesses is an extension of day- to-day living.” This article appeared in Smart CEO, post the Leadership Unplugged event and it rightly captures the need for Design Thinking.
Treasury has a critical role to play in shaping a bank’s strategy as the treasurer has to monitor the liquidity exposures, manage balance sheet volatility, maintain capital buffers and comply with a slew of regulatory requirements, while contributing as a strategic partner to the business.
Disparate systems and silos hamper the growth objective of the treasurer. An integrated treasury & ALM with real-time view of exposures and risk, aiding rapid decisions is the need of the day.
Today, I feel proud to present ‘Capital Cube’ from Intellect, an integrated treasury & ALM solution, that aids the treasurer to strategically manage the balance sheet, adapt to regulatory regimes, optimise liquidity and leverage risk to maximise profits for the bank. Capital Cube enables greater strategic planning and execution by bringing together the six key business levers for today’s treasurers which are as follows:
Treasury – Integrated Front, Mid and Back office with comprehensive asset coverage to mitigate operational, financial and settlement risks and increase operational efficiency
ALM – Holistic view of balance sheet, identifying gaps in liquidity and impact of interest rates. Highlighting the true profitability across product lines and business segments.
Capital Adequacy – Maintaining capital as per regulatory requirements ensuring optimum buffer for efficient utilisation of funds. Helps track and maintain regulatory ratios at optimal levels by ensuring proper balance of short and long term funding sources.
Risk Management – Real-time capabilities to identify and monitor, liquidity and market risk through industry standards and metrics
Client Servicing – CBX FX – Increasing customer engagement index by enabling the bank’s clients to hedge positions for better risk-return outcomes to fuel business growth
Analytics – 21 key decision support analytics providing real-time business insights and highlighting areas requiring management involvement
This solution is an outcome of our more than a decade’s risk and treasury domain expertise while adapting to changing market, regulatory and tech developments.
As I reminisce the key milestones achieved and the major upgrades, I feel happy to see this product today as a functionally rich, designed on a tech architecture meant for zero downtime.
The journey which started with a funding desk transformation for a top 5 global bank in 20 countries across the globe covering Europe, UK, North America and Canada continued with a pan Africa implementation (20 countries) for a top African Bank . This was the time when we upgraded to a cross-asset solution.
This was followed by a major win in the Middle East, where we integrated with a third party CBS and enriched our solution with ALM.
While this was happening, there was a quiet revolution in India where we crossed 20+ customers and extended our offering to NBFCs, Insurance and Payment banks. During this time, new asset classes were supported, making it a comprehensive asset coverage solution.
The story got bigger when we provided our solution to prominent central banks in Europe, Asia, Africa and India. With central banks, we enriched our offering with Portfolio Management & Analytics and Reserve Management. ALM was upgraded and made functionally rich with a capability to provide a 360 degree view and management of balance sheet along with FTP.
Innovative product offerings helped us make in-roads in Turkey with Portfolio and Investment Management Firms and ensured 5 major wins in APAC. Throughout, managing risks and adapting to regulations was the forte and the solution was further empowered with liquidity risk and market risk management, while helping banks comply with Basel III reporting.
The brand has hence stood the test of time and evolved over a decade of growth, maturity and successful relationships globally.
Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) is setting up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for FinTech at the Software Technology Parks of India STPI-Chennai, in association with ELCOT, the Government of Tamil Nadu to establish Chennai as a FinTech hub.
This initiative will provide a greater platform and pave the path for growth of budding software companies involved in providing FinTech solutions.
I have been appointed as the Chief Mentor of this wonderful initiative and to support the startup community. The coming together of some reputed organisations like NPCI, UIDAI, IIT Madras, TiE Chennai, YES Bank, Paypal, Pontaq, HSBC, Torus and other partners is a great opportunity for sharing best practices and building a viable ecosystem at the national level.
A one-day “FinTech Design Thinking Workshop” has been planned on 11th January 2019 at the FinTech 8012 Design Center at Intellect Design Arena Limited to understand, discuss and deliberate on the strategy and roadmap for banks and financial institutions in providing cutting-edge technology solutions to support their business.
The conference is being attended by digital leaders from public, private & co-operative sector banks, foreign bank, delegates from the government and speakers from partner companies.
While we all light up our houses, do spend some time today to light a few lamps inside you and sit in silence with your eyes closed…
Light the first lamp inside you and let it burn away your anger and/or jealousy that you may have for any one till date; see it melt away…
Light the second lamp and let it burn away unwanted greed and desires… Feel happy and content with what you have been blessed with.
Light the third lamp and let it fade away all your insecurities that you may have in your mind related to anything or financials. Just believe that God has given you life and he will surely give you enough to survive.
Light the fourth lamp and carry that lamp to each part of your body; let it burn away all your diseased cells or any diseases in making. Feel healthy as this lamp travels to each part of your body and illuminates each organ.
The fifth lamp is a miniature of the sun… Nothing but the divine light… Light it in the centre of your body and let it fill you with its warmth and love inside your whole body… Feel one with the Divine… Let the love and warmth that’s filled inside you ooze out of you through your smile, eyes, speech and body. Carry this love with you throughout the day.
Two associates at Intellect Mumbai, Anand Sawant and Mitali Khairnar created this during our internal Diwali Rangoli competition.
I am amazed to see the perfection of art behind the minds of technologists. At first glance, I thought it’s a work done on Photoshop but surprised to see that it was created with sand.
Salute to artists and the spirit of creation and celebration.
The National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR) and Mission Samriddhi have signed an MoU to work towards holistic human development in many areas with a key focus on the 100+ Panchayat clusters (500 gram Panchayats) Development Programme across 19 States in India. This is a 3-year programme which entails building leadership capacity at the Panchayat levels (smallest unit of administration) by applying Design Thinking and Structured Planning process of Development (GPDP) of around 37 parameters.
During this programme, we need to connect by preparing the minds of Panchayat functionaries through Samriddhi Yatras to ideal villages of India. We will also be employing the Unmukt programme involving appreciative enquiry and applying principles of boundary-less thinking. In this programme, Art of Living and FES are also participating. The programme will require many like-minded organisations to come together for an integrated development including innovative rural development technology companies to participate.
The attempt is to celebrate, connect and catalyse the existing energies and intellect to create new models of development.
Ram, Manju and I are travelling to Buldhana District in Maharashtra.
Shantilal Mutha BJS and the Government of Maharashtra along with the Tata Trust have taken on one of the biggest projects to clean or create over 5000 water bodies in the next 100 days (maybe more). They have acquired over 120 JCB machines to help remove the silts. Mission Samriddhi is partnering with this initiative to accelerate the Gram Panchayat leadership and connect with other programs such as livelihood and education.
The beauty of the program is about connecting.
Sensitivity of NGO Agility of Corporate Reach of Government
We have studied major events in history books. Most of the events are recorded around major wars and change of power. In Indian history, we remember Alexander’s (Sikandar) war and the birth of Chandragupta and then Ashoka Kalinga’s war which was in 2 BC. Then lots of wars between the 11th century till our recent independence.
Between these invasions there were long periods of great prosperity for 300 to 600 years (12 generations to 24 generations) which are not at all documented in our history. These periods are much longer than the entire industrial transformation over the last 175 years.
What were those successes? A. Systems – Political, Economic, Social B. Processes – Education and Health C. Governance – Empowerment and conflict resolutions
The modern ‘ism’ like Communism and Capitalism have completed just over 150 to 200 years and they start showing that it’s cracking.
How do we retrieve those knowledge systems that may have possible learnings of holistic happiness built around spirituality, expertise and interdependent livelihoods with lesser greed, selfishness, ego and violence?
Yesterday, I questioned the fight scenes even in animated movies made for children on Facebook and LinkedIn. I received a lot of insights from your comments. I am documenting a few of the observations here.
1. Fight scenes train a child’s mind for better defence. 2. Fight scenes build ‘violence’ as a key method of resolving any difference of opinions/perspectives/expectations. 3. Violence sells better among audiences which means we as developed human being still love ‘animal’ instinct of physical force over logical conversations (dialogue) to resolve difference of opinions/perspectives.
Somewhere I am confused with our ‘expressed’ behaviour i.e. we must live with love as a key uniting force of humanity vs. ‘suppressed’ behaviour of liking physical dominance.
Please share your thoughts on this dichotomy of our behaviours.
Hello, my name is Arun Jain. I am a design thinker living in Chennai, India. This is my blog, where I post my thoughts, technology trends and tips about the fintech world and many more.
