I am happy to share that our efforts to bring design thinking to the forefront of education have finally come to fruition! After 5 years of advocacy, SRM University will introduce a Design Thinking course for their 8000 students starting in July 2023. Our team was honoured to host college faculties, principals, and education department officials from 19 different countries at our Design Center.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of anchoring an interactive session on the importance of a design mindset in students and the power of the Five Minds to enhance their learning experience. The participants learned about leveraging design thinking as a pedagogical tool in their teaching and evaluation methods.
It was humbling to see individuals from 20 different nationalities come together and discuss the role of design thinking in shaping the development agenda and leadership skills of students. This visit is just the start of our mission to spread the philosophy of Design Thinking to the world.
Represented 19 countries are: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Kingdom of Eswatini (Formerly Swaziland), Maldives, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.
Congratulations Dr. Anbu Rathinavel who patiently worked on this agenda.
We are proud and humbled to win big at IBSi Sales League Table 2022 with six #1 Global Leadership positions. As we are forging ahead and emerging as a new world leader in the industry with our API-based Contextual and Composable banking solutions, our priorities are highlighted through our wide suite of products and solutions that reorient the future of FinTech.
Our customer-centric design thinking approach and algorithmic delivery methodology are robust to ensure defect-free, on-time deliveries while being agile and sensitive to the dynamics of our customers
During my student days, we used to hear stories about how the government procurement system was riddled with numerous challenges starting from the opaqueness of the whole system to counterproductive systemic requirements, there were some serious allegations of inconsistency involved in it as well. All these conversations inspired me to think of ways to harness technology to build transparency, rigour and efficiency in the whole process.
We at Intellect Design Arena Ltd got the opportunity to leverage technology to bring in the new wave of digital when we won the award for building technology and systems for a complete Procurement Portal – Government eMarketplace (GeM) for the Indian Government. This meant that we had to understand the finer nuances of the State Government and Central Government systems. It was a proud moment for me and my teams at Intellect for it was a huge task to live up to the expectations of integrating complex procurement systems run by various organizations under the Central and State Governments. A lot of systems were in practice but many were not documented. Today, our Honourable Prime Minister announced that Government e Marketplace (GeM) has achieved a milestone of 1 lakh crore orders through the Transparent Digital Platform in a single year. According to some reports, the government must have saved over 15% in cost (around 15,000 Cr) besides accelerating bidding and procurement.
Today, I feel pride and humility in equal parts in being able to make a small contribution towards making India better by working to improve the rigour of digital infrastructure in the country. I would like to thank my teams at Intellect Design Arena Ltd who have helped me in making my dream into reality. #GeM #gmv #procurement
Guru Purnima and Intellect Day are coinciding on the same day. The purpose of Intellect is to drive the culture of continuous learning and make a small difference to humanity by applying design thinking holistically.
For my global friends, Guru Purnima means ‘celebrating teachers’ in your life on a full moon day.
A teacher is anyone who has helped you grow in your thinking by igniting curiosity and inspiration.
I enjoy the company of this august group of learners/teachers at Intellect and my customers who provide me continuous energy, joy and fulfilment.
This inner energy and joy gets transferred to our customers where we help them work with the best-in-class FinTech solutions with the passionate leaders of intellect. In this journey of partnership, we mutually play the role of teachers, sometimes co-creating the experience of a customer’s customer. In today’s era it’s called ‘Digital’ but to us it’s joy and fulfilment for the end customer.
We transfer this joy to the young achievers of Ullas by inspiring them with a similar curiosity and joy of learning. This process has the power of Positive Virality.
Building a government procurement ecommerce portal is much more complex than direct-to-consumer because each government buyer has a complex set of products with different requirements and different work flows.
Intellect is proud to participate in building the nation’s technological infrastructure based on Made in India Technologies. It was a sweet moment for us to win this deal against Amazon a few years back in a very professional evaluation by the government’s bidding system.
Congratulations to the GeM Team led by Talleen Kumar and Intellect’s team led by Vikas Misra, Debanjan Kumar, Hitesh K Arora, Manish Nahar and Krishna Rajaraman.
Thanks to Infibeam’s team of Vishal, Neeru and Vijay. Further celebrations go out to the team of over 300 engineers who are working non-stop to provide high quality service to over a million sellers and government buyers.
1. School Teacher – 40,000 to 80,000 2. Teaching Assistant – 50,000 to 60,000 3. Assistant Professor – 90,000 to 110,000 4. Associate Professor – 130,000 to 150,000 5. Tenured Professor – 175,000 to 195,000 6. Doctor – 225,000 to 275,000 7. Specialist Doctor – 250,000 to 400,000 8. Lawyer – 250,000 to 400,000
These are the average salaries varying from $40,000 to $400,000.
Does it have any relation to the beginning of inequalities in our society?
Does it have any relation to modern caste/race system in framing?
We are happy to announce our successful FY19 results, the results vindicate 4 points in our journey to be a global FinTech player
a) Belief in ourselves to deliver cutting-edge products
b) The power of brand driving business outcomes
c) Culture of Design Thinking driving operational excellence
d) Partnership with customers driving the outcome from contextual and digital
There are 3 triangles in which a product company works – Strategy, Business and Finance.
The Strategy triangle is all about the organisation’s design, technology, and the market that is chosen. So, making the right choices of 4 LOB structures, contextual & digital and advance market share is the 1st strategic triangle that is working for us
The Business triangle, where we are getting 65% of our revenue from advance market. There is a better pricing power, our products are chosen by top 3 players in each market which is supported by our license revenue growing from an average of $250K to close to $1Mn license value.
3 drivers of the Finance triangle: 36% growth in revenue, 144% growth in EBITDA, 180% growth in PAT, which is the outcome of strategy & business.
I must congratulate and thank the high intellect and committed leadership team and talent who made us achieve what we promised the investors.
Intellect has won a large multi-million destiny deal from one of the top 20 banks in North America, for a Digital Transformation program in Payments. This deal is significant to Intellect as this is the highest deal ever won by the company.
The bank has executed the software license agreement for CBX 18 (Digital Platform) and Contextual Payments. The transformation program will be executed by iGTB in partnership with a global leading cloud platform and cognitive solutions company over a period of 3-4 years.
The Digital Payment Transformation initiative is a top five enterprise initiative within the bank established to drive digital leadership and regulatory mandates while delivering new payments capabilities and services to customers. By extending existing payment capabilities within the bank in new digital ways and adding complimentary contextual payments services, Intellect will be a strategic partner in the bank’s large transformation agenda.
This win in North America vindicates Intellect’s deep and early investments in building Cloud Native, Micro services based Omnichannel API first digital architecture for large, global and leading banks in driving Intellect’s products superiority in the FinTech world
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.
It was on 24th July 1993, when we started Polaris Software Labs from a small office at Carex Center, Chennai. We were a very small outfit with a small capital of Rs. 10,000/- (USD 200) but with large dreams of contributing in small focussed ways in FinTech space. Polaris/Intellect got its public listing within 6 years of its inception in August 1999. In 2002, Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd (Orbitech) merged with Polaris and strengthened our foot print. Lasersoft, Indigo TX, SEEC further made Polaris a dominant specialised player in the FinTech space. Ullas Trust is another important initiative which worked with young achievers since 1997 by all of us. In 2014, we decided to rebrand the core part of our business as Intellect Design Arena Ltd. and let go of Polaris’ services business.
Today, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Polaris/Intellect. I must thank and congratulate all the Polarites who contributed to building an institution of eminence in the FinTech space.
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.
