IBM today said that it has entered into a six year agreement with Janalakshmi Financial Service (JFS) – an Indian micro fianance provider to transform its business and technology capabilities.
Under the pact, JFS will utilize IBM’s business consulting expertise along with its big data and analytics, cloud and mobile capabilities to drive its plans and vision to deliver financial services to individuals and enterprises across India.
JFS has a big expansion plan to increase its foot prints from 154 branches and 3 million accounts to 1,400 branches serving over 20 million accounts by 2020. IBM as a partner will provide JFS scalability and viable business solutions.
IBM will provide technology platform along with mobile and analytics based solutions to automate organisation’s processes. Beside, IBM will work on existing JFS payment platform, provide insights using advanced analytics capabilities and leverage JFS’ geospatial capabilities with credit-decisions process to help improve distribution and collection models.
JFS will also use a ‘biometric dedupe’ solution from IBM Research to enhance the speed of deduplication of fingerprints while onboarding new customers.
“As we continue to expand, we need a strategic partner like IBM with proven domain experience in the financial sector. IBM’s established credentials in successfully driving organisational transformations both globally and in India were key to our decision to work together,” said Ramesh Ramanathan, Chairman – Jana Group.
“IBM came up with an innovative commercial model that will provide a direct connection between business performance and IT costs, while enabling us to scale operations and build an agile technology environment,” added Ramanathan.
“We are please to join JFS in its journey to help drive financial inclusion across India, empowering citizens with access to financial services that improve financial stability and quality of life. By leveraging big data, analytics, cloud and mobility solutions, JFS will be able to use the power of technology to differentiate and drive profitability, which is critical to its expansion and growth,” said Vanitha Narayanan, Managing Director – IBM India.
“Through this engagement we will help JFS make critical strides in achieving business transformation, improving service delivery and increasing customer satisfaction,” added Narayanan.
Both companies have not disclosed financial details of this deal; however according to some reports the deal is estimated to be around Rs550 crore.