75 per cent of our business will be on mobile in next two years: BankBazaar CEO

Founded in 2008, online marketplace for financial services BankBazaar has expanded rapidly in the recent years. Backed by Amazon, Fidelity Growth Partners, Sequoia Capital, Mousse Partners and Walden International the company has so far raised a total of Rs 500 crore and partners with about 75 banks and financial institutions. In a conversation with Business Today, CEO and co-founder Adhil Shetty talks about how financial sector in India is changing slowly.

BankBazaar was launched in 2008. Wasn't there a lot of hesitation among customers to buy financial products online?

Yes, the initial phase was quite slow. We saw an uptake in e-commerce in India. So, in the beginning traffic was quite low but in last two years we have seen phenomenal jump. In March, 2014, we had 1 million visitors a month which jumped to 9 million visitors in march 2016. The big pick up came after e-commerce exploded. People are now comfortable with online and saying  'Hey, if I am doing my shopping online why not financial products.'

Most banks also have online presence today. So why would a consumer go and buy a product on your site rather than directly from the bank?

The data shows us that 80 per cent of the customers on BankBazaar are applying to a bank they don't have prior relationship with. If you look at the same data on a bank site, it's a mirror image, so 80 per cent of the people applying on a bank site are existing customers of that bank. There are two types of customers in India, one is a customer, who is 100 per cent loyal to a bank and that person will always go to that bank. That is why a majority of people on a bank site happen to be their customers. While the other group of people, which is larger and very savvy, want to know about the best available offers. Customers are savvy enough to pick the right offer. The customers who are loyal to a brand would continue to go to a brand but the customers who want to see the best deal will come to BankBazaar.

Does most of your traffic come from Urban India?

As much as 70 per cent of our business comes from tier-1 cities, while the rest comes from  tier-2 and tier-3. The reason behind this difference is Urban India is more internet savvy. However, one interesting thing is the quotient of growth in non tier-1 cities that is higher than tier 1. Another interesting observation is that our business started out as salaried business, but now self-employed form 20 per cent of our base and it is also growing very quickly. Also, initially only 10 per cent of our traffic used to be from women users but today they form 30 per cent of our traffic and that is also growing.How has smartphone impacted your business?It has completely transformed our business. Two years back, 30 per cent of our traffic was mobile but today it has grown to 51 per cent. I know it for a fact that two years from now 75 per cent of our business will be from mobile. Now, you design a product from mobile-first philosophy. It has changed the way technology resources are invested , the way product resources are invested and has changed the way these resources think of design as a function. Everything we do revolves around mobile and it also allows us to discover various other parameters.

Security is always a concern when a customer is doing transactions online but in your case isn't it more so? After all he will also upload several documents online.It is one of the key customer concerns and we have done three things to take care of that. First thing we did to address this concern was to get an ISO ISMS certification three years ago. We have an information security team internally, which hunts on what the latest vulnerability is, latest hacks and finds counters for them. There is a dedicated team which scouts the wall for best practices. We are one of the most audited companies in India. So far, we have not had one single breach in the last eight years.

You have almost made your processes paperless. How has been the response from your customers?

Yeah almost, because I am not allowed to do certain things today. The customers are very excited, the people who are applying for this products are getting them quickly, maybe three times faster than if they would have went through the standard process. The entire industry today is saying that paperless is the future. Everyone understands that this is what the future of finance is and it is absolute customer delight. Today, the reason why finance is difficult is because we have to fill in 100 forms and a lot of time is needed. This is going to change when processes go paperless.