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Design Thinking at Artoo

Design elements and how they’re perceived guide us to build better features and ultimately serve our users efficiently. While we factor in several outcomes while designing, the real magic happens on the field when the users respond and react to it.

But what if, we encounter the complete opposite of this? What if users fail to see what we did or if they showed us something that we failed to see? 

Behavioural science delves deeper into the aesthetics of human psychology and offers meaningful insights that help build sustainable solutions. Ideas 42 is an organization that helps companies develop behaviourally informed product and service design through A/B testing. They tackle difficult behavioral challenges around adoption and usage of digital financial services in the developing world.

 At Artoo, we are committed to drive superior adoption for our users. Our apps have been designed to support first-time tech users as well as those with minimal tech skills. Through this, we are able to improve user productivity, which helps our field officers serve more borrowers and ultimately brings us a step closer to financial inclusion. Ideas 42 and Artoo are collaborating together to implement behaviourally informed product design.

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eKYC and eSign

In a country with an unbanked population of approximately 70%, onboarding is a real challenge.

Aadhar has managed to get 1.06 billion Indians under its hood, thus successfully covering people from all nook and corners of the country. Currently, 339 million Indians have Aadhar linked to their bank accounts. These numbers throw up an interesting opportunity to use Aadhar to connect even those excluded to financial services.

 KYC for the unbanked has always meant either photocopies of several documents or no proof at all. This suboptimal borrower onboarding increases acquisition costs and the probability of fraud. Wet signatures, on the other hand, require verification and the customer has to visit the branch office several times until the loan gets approved. For the loan officer as well, this means frequent visits to the customer, while maintaining a whole lot of paperwork. In this whole scenario, vital time is lost for the borrowers and the lenders.

 eKYC and eSign, which are a part of IndiaStack, allow digital onboarding of anyone registered with Aadhar. Through eKYC, the Identity and Address of the borrower are verified electronically through Aadhaar Authentication via Biometric or an Iris scan. eSign removes the need for wet signatures, and the borrower consent is approved and verified using biometric or IRIS scan, ensuring a foolproof sign up. By leveraging this, we can easily bring the unbanked closer to financial services using a single ID proof. What’s further interesting is that the loan approval process is simplified and done in under 30 mins.

IndiaStack is a congregation of APIs that allows firms to use the digital infrastructure to build paperless, presence less solutions. Artoo leverages IndiaStack to provide eKYC & eSign services for its lending partners. This lowers customer acquisition costs for lenders and onboarding time for field agents, thus enhancing their productivity.

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My internship at Artoo

I first walked into Artoo anxious to see what was in store for us. Me and my friends were welcomed in  by a warm and friendly Mradula, who introduced us to Artoo with so much compassion and sincerity that it really showcased her faith in the company. We discovered how Artoo was helping a lot more than just the borrowers and leaving its mark along the way.

We then got to know Sameer and how he began Artoo from scratch and the strength it took to demonstrate the abilities of Artoo. It was unbelievably impressive!  

Luckily for us, we got to experience interacting with owners of small businesses later. It was incredibly interesting to hear what they had to say on various issues, including ‘demonetization’. To see the sparkle in their eye when they told us their children were studying in college doing great courses was overwhelming. It was nice to know Artoo was helping so many people through its work.

As a company, Artoo’s culture was really heartwarming. The interpersonal relationship between the team showed what true equality was. Looking at the passion in Yashasvini, Aparna, Kavita, and Anubhav’s eyes made me realize about what we were yet to experience. Going out for numerous ice cream treats proved to us how the team was really human, for all we had seen them do was sit on their chairs glued to to their Macbooks for hours together. We would see them laugh a little but that was it. It was nice to see the Artoo team to work like a family.

Artoo really brought me out of my shell and made me do things I would not have otherwise. I am really grateful for this rare experience and I hope many others are able to experience this as well.

About the Author

Shloka Laka Reddy | Class XII, the Valley School

Shloka interned with Artoo in April 2017. A science enthusiast, she has keen interest in pursuing Engineering. She likes running as a sport and is an avid basketball player too.

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Fintech players tap technology to aid financial inclusion

Beena Parmar from Moneycontrol wrote about Artoo’s tech offerings to the small borrower. You can read about it here or online

Financial inclusion is taking a step ahead with more fintech players using technology and big data to help smaller borrowers with zero digital footprint and no documentation gain access to formal channels of banking.

Technology and data analytics have been put to good use by many fintech players such as Artoo, Innoviti, ArthImpact, FlexiLoans and others to explore the largely untapped market.

Away from formal channels of banking, more than 50 percent of Indians in need of money do not get access to funding because they don't have a borrowing history. But there is huge data availability and these fintech players are cashing in on the data using technology to give small credit.

Abhishek Kothari, co-founder at FlexiLoans who has worked for 12 years as an analytics professional after graduating from IIT Bombay, said, “There is lot of data available from across Google, mobile data, Aadhaar, credit data, connect some of them through social data like LinkedIn, Facebook all of which are linked to hundreds of more people. We are experimenting alternate credit data and trying to collect psychometric data as well to assess the credit profile. The more data we collect, the more powerful we become.”

FlexiLoans, an online lending platform for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) is using tech and credit algorithm to facilitate end-to-end solutions including acquisition to credit appraisal to recovery of loans starting from Rs 10,000.

Ritesh Jain, co-founder, FlexiLoans, says, “Banks do not do this. We give loans from one month to up to three years and within 48 hours the loan is disbursed. All are 100 percent collateral-free and unsecured loans.”

Apart from banking partners, it is tying up with merchants like Flipkart and petrol pump owners to help their sellers and truck drivers get loans for inventories of 2-3 days.

According to Jain, the sellers also get cash discount on upfront payments, so both Flipkart and the seller benefit by getting loans from them. It makes business sense because there is money, accessibility at the right time with the right proposition.

ArthImpact is another a digital on-tap lending platform, founded by former CEO of Airtel Payments Bank and the founder and CEO of FINO Paytech. It provides loans from Rs 2000 up to Rs 1 lakh to bring the benefits of “India Stack and Jan Dhan” to households and small businesses in India with an income bracket of Rs 1 lakh to 5 lakh per annum.

Banks such as HDFC Bank and Axis Bank are also harnessing fintech players by giving them an in-house platform to help the banks reach the last mile digitally.

Artoo, a fintech firm which facilitates loan origination system to tap the small borrowers that have irregular and undocumented income, is bringing digitalisation to their doorstep.

Sameer Segal, Founder and CEO, Artoo, said, “We have tied up with eight lending partners to give loans from Rs 1 lakh – 25 lakh by roughly spending 30 minutes at the borrower’s doorstep to use basic information from borrowers, their customers, which is pooled in and analysed through data analytics. We have inverted the process of SMEs coming to banks. These borrowers range from kirana stores to small restaurants to farmers with a few cows, small fields, etc. and there is lot of informal information available on them.”

Artoo provides technology and customised solutions to its eight lending partners which include banks, non-banking finance companies, microfinance institutions and small finance banks, which originate all the loans compressing the loan cycle and cost of acquisition for lenders by nearly half.

With over 90 percent of small businesses outside the formal channels and the reach of internet and smartphones only likely to grow, players are likely to thrive on the vast data and the potential credit market in India.

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The Artoo Experience

Artoo is a company that is highly empathetic. It works tirelessly towards improving the lives of field officers. Microfinance institutions serve borrowers with unmet financial needs. These institutions rely on field officers who visit these borrowers at a place convenient to the latter (which is either their house or the place of work). Field officers faced a nightmare managing all the paper work for these institutions. Artoo introduced an intelligent digital paperless solution for these field officers, who now claim Artoo is a hero of sorts to them.

For its users, Artoo has come off as someone who is strong, young, enthusiastic, and energetic. But at a personal level, Artoo reminds me of Ikeuchi Aya. In the Japanese series of “One litre of tears”, Ikeuchi Aya is an ailing protagonist. Despite her ailment, her priority was always “Human Relationships” and its importance in a person’s life. When life brought her down to her knees, it was her family and friends who kept her going. Artoo is this family and friends. Its innovative idea of converting all paperwork into software made this an error- and hassle-free process for the field agents. 

At Artoo, I read a bunch of articles. These articles are the reason why I could argue about the financial sector with my sister. I am a huge fan of informative articles, and this task was eventful and exciting. We had a little chat with Sameer and he shared with us the intent of the company and how the whole idea of building software for the field officers struck him. 

What keeps the company going? I’d say Sameer’s humour. But not to forget all the team mates who believe in Artoo’s vision and work tirelessly to achieve it. This company is indeed very motivated. The best thing about Artoo is its optimism. Sameer is the best person when it comes to talking about failures that Artoo faced. He puts it across in a very distinct manner that they consider these failures as opportunities. It is a very energetic company. My mind is convinced that they derive such immense energy from ice-creams, late night pakodas, and chai.

By the second day, all of us felt very comfortable; for example, if a chair is proving to a torture to your spine, you can always jump onto the bean bag at this office. Artoo has managed to strike the right balance between official and casual atmosphere. And Artoo’s intent is very clear. They look after the comforts of a field officer like a host to a guest. 

Artoo has a mobile- and web-based platform. Aparna, one of the engineers who works on the mobile platform, gave us an insight as to how the app works for the field agents. She took us through on the app and told us how it was designed. We also spoke about our plans for the future. Her story was very inspiring to me.

Overall, my experience at Artoo has been incredibly insightful. From the field visits to holding conversations with the team mates, everything has taught me that as Artoo grows, their moral aspect grows with them. From my field visit, I understood that small-scale vendors are always open to sharing their struggles with smiling faces. It is because of Artoo that I got an insight into the lives of people with whom I hardly spoke to. The company has some very deep values, and I hope they remain rooted as they grow.

About the Author

Meghana Vidyadhar | Class XII, the Valley School

Meghana was a summer intern at Artoo in 2017. A student of the Valley school, she aspires to be an aeronautical engineer. She is passionate about everything Space and wants to pursue a career in this field. In her free time, she enjoys being a Hip-Hop dancer and reading magazines.

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Artoo partners with Annapurna Microfinance

BY ET BUREAU 

You can read the article here or online

Financial technology firm Artoo has partnered with Annapurna Microfinance to help improve the efficiency of its loan processing.

The lending firm will use Artoo's Intelligent Digital Loan Origination System, which would help it reduce the amount of time taken to approve loans. Annapurna Microfinance has a strong presence in rural, sub-urban and tribal communities in the states of Rajasthan, Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura.

Artoo's digital platform will be deployed by Annapurna Microfinance in five branches of Orissa, followed by Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in the later weeks and scale to 15 branches by July. Annapurna expects to disburse loans worth INR 100 Crores by the end of 12 months.

Dibyajyoti Pattnaik, director, Annapurna Microfinance said, "We were searching for a product that would enable us to make our processes more efficient, less manual, make interventions more technological and minimize the subjectivity involved in loan appraisals. The evolving market required us to update our processes, to enable quick and easy credit to the underserved population. To this end, we have leveraged Artoo's expertise in digitization of MSME lending. This has helped us to expand our reach and lend to the last mile effectively."

It also plans to enter the individual lending segment, aimed at borrowers with higher repayment capabilities. Beginning with microenterprise loans (ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 10,00,000), it plans to enter micro-housing loans in the future.

Using the Artoo platform will enable field officers make loan decisions at the customer's doorstep, thereby reducing the loan approval and turn-around time significantly. This will help Annapurna Microfinance to reach out to more customers in remote areas in a shorter time.

It plans to increase the loan ceiling for this segment of borrowers from Rs 50,000 to Rs 3,00,000. This is because the platform captures a wide range of notional data to perform a holistic credit assessment at the doorstep of the borrower, and therefore reducing the risk associated with high-value loans.

It allows the lender to minimize human error at all levels and eliminate individual bias. In addition, borrowers will know about their loan approval status on the field, thus establishing trust and transparency in the process.

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My Experience as an Intern at Artoo

When I was first told that I would be interning at Artoo, I was thrilled! Sameer’s presentation on Artoo in school a few years ago coupled with my own research had given me a brief insight into what the company stood for, which is simply put across in their tagline – “technology for those who need it most”. After talking to Indus in school and seeing her excitement and passion toward Artoo, I was also infused with the same fervour and I couldn’t wait to learn about and be part of the culture at a start-up like Artoo.

The first day there opened up my eyes to the kind of impact Artoo was having on the lives of people all over the country. After the introductory session with Mradula, I realised that the spread of the usage of technology was making everything in the microfinance sector so much more convenient. As the days went by and I talked to more and more people including Sameer and Yashaswini, I was exposed more and more to the change that Artoo was spearheading – the increase in availability for financial resources for the people who did not have access to it. I also learned how the human contact went a really long way in establishing trust within the customer.

On analysing Artoo’s social media handles, I understood how social media had a very large role to play in the branding of a company. We used our newly found data analysis skills to come up with Artoo’s Operations Review for their primary client, Ujjivan. These experiences coupled with the field visits we got to do, interviewing small business lenders about their troubles gave me a deeper insight into Artoo’s primary purpose and I felt more connected. Listening to the tales of hardships, hope and success that we heard from these people humbled me.

We also got to interact with Aparna, one of the Engineers at Artoo. She showed us the app created by Artoo to expedite the process of obtaining of loans by customers by reducing paperwork by a huge margin and increasing convenience.  We also interacted with Anubhav, their data analyst and he explained to us exactly what ‘machine learning’ was and by the end of our discussion with him, the sheer beauty of data analytics and the kind of thought that went into everything that had been done was absolutely mind blowing. But only afterward, when we were given the opportunity to do some data work ourselves did I truly appreciate its power.

I was really inspired by the kind of passion the people at Artoo have for their jobs and the sense of goal orientation that was in each one of the employees. But one of the most special things that I felt while I was interning at Artoo was the feeling of togetherness.

Being from a school like Valley where going to school is almost like coming home, I was always told that things outside would be different and less comfortable. At Artoo, I felt deeply involved and the kind of family like feeling there was in the air was undeniable. Every time we got to eat lunch together, go out for ice-cream with them (almost every day) or even just sit in on their meetings, there was a sense of people coming together to truly and honestly make a difference. This was really special for me and one of the things that will stay with me forever.

This has genuinely been one of the most enriching experiences in my whole life and I can’t thank the people at Artoo (especially Mradula for organising everything and spending so much time with us) and at Valley enough for giving me this opportunity. I feel that two weeks was just not enough time and if I could, I would love to intern at Artoo for at least a month!    

About the Author

Maya Krishnan | Class XII, The Valley School

Maya is a student of the Valley School who was a summer intern at Artoo. Science and Mathematics are her subjects of interest, and she hopes to work someday in environment conservation. Her hobbies include singing, reading and playing sports, among which volleyball and basketball are her favourites.

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Building Forms in Ember in a blink

Forms are an indispensible part of any web application. Probably not the most loved, but it won’t be an exaggeration to say the most neglected part. Everyone is excited about the ‘cool’ stuff their app does. Taking user input, validating it and submitting it to server ( read form). Let’s just say engineers are not falling over each other to do it. We at Artoo are no different! But efficient form validation is not a problem we, or anyone, can choose to ignore.

Artoo is an Intelligent Digital Loan Origination System for financial organizations lending to small businesses. Since the borrowers have limited digital footprint, we need to facilitate data collection and analysis of their business’ profitability. Form based input is a vital part of our web app for loan processing, built using Ember. Ember is a JavaScript front-end framework designed to help you build websites with rich and complex user interactions. It does so by providing developers both with many features that are essential to manage complexity in modern web applications, as well as an integrated development toolkit that enables rapid iteration.

We have engineered our solution so that form rendering and validation logic is abstracted and does not have to be coded separately for every form. This reduces the time it takes to create or customize forms for our clients and minimizes bugs. The essence of our solution is presented here.

Suppose we need the following form in our app:

Our requirements: Only letters with spaces are allowed in the name field. Name should be between 5 and 20 characters. Email should be of format abc@example.com. All are mandatory fields. Submit button should be enabled only when all fields are entered and in valid formats.

This is the general design guideline: A single common component should be used to render a particular type of field. E.g all text fields in the form should be rendered by a single text-input component. Validation logic should be abstract.

We will make use of the Ember add-on https://www.npmjs.com/package/ember-composability in our implementation.

This is what our registration form template looks like: {{text-input  labelText='Name'  mandatory=true  pattern='^[\w\s]{5,20}$'  errorText='Please enter full name'  value=name }} <br> {{text-input  labelText='Email'  mandatory=true  pattern='^\S+@\S+\.\S+$'  errorText='Please enter valid email format'  value=email }} <br> {{select-input  labelText='Select Gender'  mandatory=true  content=genderContent  optionLabelPath='name'  optionValuePath='value'  errorText='Please select your gender'  value=gender }} <br> <button disabled={{disabled}}>Submit</button>

Key points: We are using the same text-input component to render name and email fields. Validations and label names are configurable. Submit button is conditionally enabled by the ‘disabled’ flag.

Lets see how we achieve this through our components: JS behind registration-form import Ember from 'ember'; import ParentComponentSupport from 'ember-composability/mixins/parent-component-support';

export default Ember.Component.extend(ParentComponentSupport, {

 genderContent:[   {name:'Male',value:'male'},   {name:'Female',value:'female'},   {name:'Other',value:'other'}  ],  disabled: Ember.computed('composableChildren.@each.errorMessage', {    get(){      let errorElement = this.get('composableChildren').findBy('errorMessage');      if(errorElement){       return true;      }      return false;    }  }) });

Key points: registration-form is the parent component. It has access to properties of its child components. We are using this feature to enable or disable the submit button based on errors in the child components Content for gender selection is explicitly declared here. This could come from your server too.

The error-watcher component import Ember from 'ember';

export default Ember.Component.extend({

errorMessage: Ember.computed('value',{ get(){ let value = this.get('value'); let errorMessage; let regex=this.get('pattern'); if((this.get('mandatory') && !value) || (value && !value.match(regex))){ return this.get('errorText'); }     } }) });

The text-input component JS: import ChildComponentSupport from 'ember-composability/mixins/child-component-support'; import RegistrationForm from './registration-form'; import ErrorWatcher from './error-watcher';

export default ErrorWatcher.extend(ChildComponentSupport, {  _parentComponentTypes: [RegistrationForm] });

Template HBS file:

<label> {{labelText}} </label> <br> {{input type=text value=value size="80"}} <br> {{#if errorMessage}}      <span class='error'>{{errorMessage}}</span> {{/if}}

The select-input component JS: import ChildComponentSupport from 'ember-composability/mixins/child-component-support'; import RegistrationForm from './registration-form'; import ErrorWatcher from './error-watcher';

export default ErrorWatcher.extend(ChildComponentSupport, {  _parentComponentTypes: [RegistrationForm] });

Template file: <div> <label> {{labelText}} </label> {{ember-selectize content=content optionLabelPath=optionLabelPath optionValuePath=optionValuePath placeholder='Select an item' value=value }} {{#if errorMessage}}      <span class='error'>{{errorMessage}}</span> {{/if}} </div>

Key points: We define an error-watcher component that is listening to changes to ‘value’ property.            If the value entered by the user does not conform to the expected format, the error message gets set.      2.  Both select and text input components extend from error-watcher.           This gives error-watcher access to ‘value’ property set for text and select inputs.      3.  select-input and text-input components use the child component support mixin and           declare registration-form as parent component. This exposes the errorMessage property,           used to set the ‘disabled’ flag. That’s it! Your registration form with all requirements and design guidelines satisfied is ready. Incorrect entries will make the form look like this:

Note how the submit button is disabled. When all values are entered correctly:

No errors and ready to submit. This design also allows for propagating the values entered in  the child component to the parent. More on that later. Hope this helps you with your Ember app forms!

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Seeing her father build a business in a small town inspired Kavita Nehemiah to start up

Tanvi Dubey from YourStory wrote about Kavita’s entrepreneurial journey. You can read more here or online

Kavita Nehemiah’s belief in financial inclusion as a transformative solution to poverty pushed her to start up. As COO of Bengaluru-based Artoo, she plays a key role in enabling small businesses’ access to funds.

“Technology for those who need it the most” was Kavita Nehemiah’s aim, and this was what primarily led her to start Artoo, a fintech firm that is revolutionising lending to the smallest entrepreneurs by equipping loan officers with intelligent technology, at the borrower’s doorstep.

The MSME sector is one of the largest sources of employment in India; however, it is a sector that spans mostly rural India, and while small businesses are always in need of capital and funding, their lack of technology stops them from getting access to said funds.

Kavita’s strong belief in financial inclusion as a transformative solution to poverty drove her to launch Artoo. The company draws its name from the R2-D2 robot character in the Star Wars franchise, as, according to Kavita, “What R2-D2 is to Luke Skywalker, Artoo is to our clients.”

“It is intelligent, and is always by your side, providing solutions,” she says.

We spoke to Kavita to know more about her journey with microfinance and fintech and her desire to leverage technology to make lending and borrowing easy.

Digitalisation at the doorstep

According to Kavita, there is an estimated annual funding gap of $30 billion between what MFIs and traditional banks are able and willing to lend, and the demand from potential borrowers, presenting a huge opportunity for lenders. Artoo works with lenders by equipping their loan officers with intelligent technology, which allows them to capture unique, notional data about the borrowers and their businesses, at their doorstep, therefore enabling lenders to make informed lending decisions.

Starting up to make an impact

The 30-year-old, who is currently based in Bengaluru, where Artoo is headquartered, is an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where she studied Economics and graduated in 2007. Born in Vellore in Tamil Nadu, she spent her formative years in a boarding school in Ooty. The boarding school experience and seeing her father set up a business in the small, underdeveloped town of Ranipet, a few kilometers away from Vellore, where her family lived, left a lasting impression on her. “The transformation it brought about in the area in terms of employment opportunities and economic development deeply influenced me,” she says.

Soon after her graduation, she joined the then fledgling microfinance institution Ujjivan Financial Services, which is now a finance bank. From credit and risk analysis to product development, Kavita essayed various roles. She was instrumental in launching their lending vertical – loans of a larger ticket size, for entrepreneurial customers who had larger credit needs.

“I was always passionate about market-based approaches to poverty alleviation. My work at Ujjivan fueled my enthusiasm towards financial inclusion as a means of empowering the underserved. As I was setting up the new lending vertical at Ujjivan, I realised that the process was predominantly paper-based and resource-intensive, and could be made significantly more effective and impactful with the help of technology. Sameer Segal, who was interning at Ujjivan with me, shared my vision.”

So, after Kavita graduated from Cornell in 2012, she joined Sameer, the Founder and CEO of Artoo. As COO, she oversees customer success, marketing and communications, finance, and HR.

Initial hiccups

In her initial days as an entrepreneur, Kavita faced multiple challenges.

Breaking into financial services with cutting edge technology and trying to convince conventional financial institutions to buy into our vision was tough,

she says. Given that they armed their field agents with smartphones, at a time when they were not so commonplace, invited a lot of resistance initially.

This was not all. She recalls, “After we got onboard our initial set of clients, we realised that supporting them would not be easy with our original team of under five people. Unlike with the selling of banking technology, the users of our solution were first-time tech users who, at best, had a high school education. Improving adoption of the technology, therefore, meant being able to provide multilingual training and user support to these end users. So our next challenge was growing the team from the initial set of five to the 21 members we have today.” In early-2015, they received funding to the tune of $500,000 (Rs 3.1 crore) in a Series A round from Accion Venture Labs and

So our next challenge was growing the team from the initial set of five to the 21 members we have today.” In early-2015, they received funding to the tune of $500,000 (Rs 3.1 crore) in a Series A round from Accion Venture Labs and Rianta Capital’s Artha initiative, which was used primarily for expansion and increasing the team size.

Being different

Artoo is an Android and web-based solution that allows lenders to manage the entire customer lifecycle – from lead generation to onboarding, to credit underwriting, and finally disbursement – on a single platform. Field users are equipped with an Android app, and backend users with a web interface. Each interface is carefully customised for different roles and users.

Kavita explains how within the MSME sector their focus is primarily on those who deal with a cash economy, such as vendors, local kirana stores, small hotels, and salons, and require loans between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 15 lakh. “These borrowers,” says Kavita, “are largely underserved – the ticket size being too large for microfinance institutions, and the lending being too risky for banks, primarily because they have no documented sources of income. This makes credit assessment difficult. What sets us apart is that we have tapped into this overlooked segment, by empowering lenders with the intelligence to perform superior credit risk assessment and lend to this section of borrowers.”

Data collection is both quantitative and qualitative, and looks at family structures, family members, earnings, details such as purchase habits, and so on to determine the creditworthiness of the borrower.

Emerging trends post-demonetisation

Demonetisation has greatly impacted the country, especially small businesses that dealt with cash-only transactions. However, Kavita says, on a positive note,

Demonetisation has provided a significant boost to digital transactions with even local shopkeepers and auto-drivers embracing digital wallets. These changes have forced us to be proactive and customise our product to cater to the evolving ecosystem.

According to Kavita, post-demonetisation, the emerging trends in fintech will be triggered by the changing regulations – small finance banks, payments banks, India Stack (riding on Aadhaar) with eKYC, eSign, DigiLocker, and so on, everything will change. She says, “The influx of digital data that has begun since the announcement of demonetisation will spur a host of technical innovations, as well as the customisation of services for consumers. However, this will need stringent regulations and compliances.”

Women in the fintech sector

While financial services and technology are both primarily male-dominated industries, Kavita has had the opportunity to work with both men and women who recognise her as an equal. However, she points out that people are quick to stereotype women who are confident and articulate as being bossy. “Women tend to take a backseat in the boardroom and allow their male colleagues to take the lead, as they are conscious that women leaders are perceived this way,” she says.

Making time for oneself

As an entrepreneur, the one thing that is non-negotiable for Kavita is making time for herself. “I follow a simple rule – when I’m not at work, I focus 100 percent on not working, and concentrate on my time with my family.”

Watching Artoo grow every day keeps her driven, and she says,

Whether it’s a new client we acquire or a new feature we develop on our platform, it keeps encouraging me to do more.

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Grameen Koota partners with Artoo to develop digital lending model

Priyanka Sangani of ET Bureau writes about Grameen Koota and Artoo partnership. You can read about the partnership here or online.

Rural lending firm Grameen Koota has partnered with fintech firm Artoo to launch individual business loans. Grameen Koota, among the pioneers in rural lending for 17 years is expanding its product portfolio and will work with Artoo to develop a digital lending model. Artoo's platform will help it go paperless and reduce loan approval and go-to-market time significantly.

Udaya Kumar, Managing Director, Grameen Koota, said, "Post demonetisation, investments in technology and analytics are critical. As we foray into Individual Lending, we believe that it is imperative to adopt digitization into our processes. To this end, we have leveraged Artoo's expertise in holistic digitization for Individual lending. Artoo's platform will allow us to build a scalable portfolio while maintaining risk at group lending levels. By improving efficiency and turnaround time, we aim to deliver a significantly better customer experience." 

The products under the individual lending vertical will be the first to be provided through the digital platform.

Grameen Koota estimates that 25 - 30% of their existing borrower base will be interested and eligible for these loans and plans to graduate these customers out of their existing group and lend to them on an Individual basis. Along with unsecured term loans, borrowers can also avail top-up loans for recurring working capital needs. The plan is to launch this product in 15 branches initially and it is estimated to grow the portfolio to Rs 70 cr in the first year. Sameer Segal,CEO, Artoo, added, "Artoo is bringing its experience of having disbursed Rs 1800 crore in 30 states across India and its nuanced understanding of the MSME borrower to help Grameen Koota re-imagine Individual Lending and deliver value in the rural context. We look forward to helping them continuously increase their efficiency and profitability while keeping risks low and ensuring a seamless experience for their customers." Grameen Koota is currently operational in five states wiht close to 400 branches. As of August 2016, they had crossed the portfolio size of Rs 3000 cr with a lending base of over 16 lakh.

[artootrills-blog]

Fintech Tracker: Can Artoo Help Provide Faster, Smarter Loans For Small Businesses?

Artoo was featured in BlommbergQuint by Mayank Jain. You can read more here or online

Can a simple conversation help a small business owner get a loan? Without the hassle of a long drawn out application process and myriad forms to fill?

Bangalore-based fintech firm Artoo says yes.

Using big data and analytics, Artoo claims it can tell microfinance companies and small finance banks whether to lend to a particular customer based on a simple conversation. The company uses the existing workforce of a lender, arms them with Artoo’s technology and the required analytical skills for faster and more efficient processing of loans.

The segment they are targeting is what is widely known as the missing-middle of the loan market. Micro, small and medium enterprises that find it difficult to get credit from the formal financial system. A study by International Finance Center in 2012 found that 94 percent of Indian MSMEs are unregistered, which limits their access to credit.

“These businesses are largely cash-based so their digital footprint is fairly limited. They often run multiple businesses so one doesn’t get a full picture of their finances by just looking at one part of the income stream,” said Sameer Segal, founder and chief executive officer of Artoo while explaining the thinking behind their process which combines available credit information, comparison with peer borrowers and information provided by the applicant.

This process is less-paper heavy and relies on data analytics in the absence of a formal credit history, Segal added.

Segal believes that the credit needs of the MSME sector are large but they often get left out to the formal banking sector. Correcting this is essential for a sector which provides a bulk of growth and employment to the economy.

There is a total finance requirement of Rs 32.5 lakh crore in the MSME sector, which comprises of Rs 26 lakh crore in debt. 

International Finance Centre - MSME Report, 2012 

How The Process Works

With Artoo’s technology, the credit officer is able to run a quick background and credit check on an applicant through his tablet or smartphone which provides real time information on their credit history. This, together with a conversation with the borrower, is used to a generate a credit report, based on which a loan is disbursed.

Sounds too simple?

Segal says it is not and argues that Artoo collects 800 data points before coming up with a decision on the amount to be loaned out.

At the end of the conversation, we are able to tell the customer the loan amount that we will be able to offer. The field agent uses pre-made templates to ask very specific but simple questions to assess their financial position. We are able to collect 800 data points around the business which is mostly soft data including their standard of living and going to the kind of roof in their homes.

Sameer Segal, Chief Executive Officer, Artoo

Artoo says it has profiled 4.5 lakh businesses across the country with total disbursements clocking Rs 1,800 crore. They use this database to conduct a peer review which looks for any exaggeration of income or any under-reporting of liabilities by a potential borrower.

The use of technology reduces the time and cost involved in the process. Artoo claims that the cost of acquiring a new borrower reduces by as much as 45 percent if a lender uses their technology.

Overcoming The Trust Deficit

A big challenge for MSMEs, used to informal sources of credit, is getting a first time lender to trust them, said Segal.

The way we build trust is by using secure technology every step of the way and spending the required time instead of rushing through the process. We use optical character recognition, and e-KYC to establish their creditworthiness. The borrower also feels reassured that someone is interested in providing them a loan. That builds trust.

Sameer Segal, Chief Executive Officer, Artoo

The push for digitisation isn’t new for the credit industry which has been keen to adopt Aadhaar enabled e-KYC and online credit information services, but Artoo’s end-to-end handling of the processes differentiates it from competition, Saigal added.

The company counts Ujjivan Financial Services, a microfinance institution turned small finance bank, among its major customers. Ujjivan disburses loans ranging between Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh through its platform. RBL Bank’s partner Swadhar also lends using Artoo’s technology.

No First Mover Advantage

The SME lending space has attracted a number of firms making it a competitive field already.

Artoo competes with LendingKart which offers loans through its website and apps to SMEs. Capital Float, which provides working capital financing without any collateral through its online platform, also operates in this segment.

Segal, however, insisted that Artoo is a differentiated product.

“Most players are working for the top 2 percent of the customers who already have ready credit histories and digital footprints to back them up. We are chasing the other 98 percent,” Segal said. “Most of the companies are focussed on the back-office automation but for MSMEs, you have to be on the field. That’s where the data is.”

Experts feel that use of big data and technology is only going to increase in the financial sector and creditworthiness is better determined through analytics than someone’s personal judgement. However, checks on cash flows need to be more robust, said Kalpesh Mehta, partner - banking at Deloitte.

There are two-fold analysis models prevalent in the industry where people are not just judging the applicant’s financials but the situation of similar borrowers across industries. The idea is to judge if the cash flows are stable and predictable and it always helps to have more data than less.

Kalpesh Mehta, Partner - Banking, Deloitte

Mehta adds that the use of technology and big data is going to be the new era of loan origination. “Post demonetisation, analytics will be more useful to take a call on creditworthiness as the cash situation wavers,” Mehta said while adding that some of the analytics used in these new models are far superior to just looking at an annual financial statement.

[artootrills-blog]

Artoo Through Fresh Eyes

Three weeks ago, I arrived in India for the first time, eager to gain as much exposure as possible to social entrepreneurship in a country bustling with entrepreneurial spirit. I got this chance through an internship with Villgro Innovations Foundation, an incubator for early-stage social innovation. Excited and a little nervous, I wasn’t exactly sure what my experience would be. Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Artoo, which is one of the social enterprises that Villgro supports. The visit taught me two lessons: first, talented social entrepreneurs are in abundance in India, and second, they work with an authentic commitment to serving the poor.

The problem that Artoo strives to solve is not one that I was familiar with before arriving in India. I learned that loans from financial institutions are less accessible to bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) populations in India (and other low- and middle-income countries) in both urban and rural settings because of systemic and physical barriers. Financial institutions have a network of field agents in place to increase the accessibility of loans for BoP populations, but the paper-based process that field agents rely on is inefficient and is typically stunted by avoidable delays.

Artoo is tackling this inefficiency by providing a paper-free, mobile-based platform for field agents from financial institutions to help them reach BoP populations. The digitization of the loan process avoids delays encountered in the paper-based process, like transportation time. The platform includes digital tools to cover each step involved in the provision of a loan, with specific products designed for financial institutions and their field agents to monitor the transaction.

Touring around the Artoo office, I was impressed by the level of talent of the people I met. Anubhav, a data analyst, showed me extensive and dense sets of data collected for each of Artoo’s customers each month to analyze field agent performance and productivity. Filled with graphics and lots of numbers, it was evident that the financial institutions that Artoo serves are well-informed. Shilpa, Artoo’s only in-house designer, showed me her hand-drawn mockups for the design of the Artoo website, and then demonstrated how she turns those designs digital. The attention to detail was impressive. Then I was led into a room with about a dozen people sitting in front of computer screens filled with code. Each developer described what he was working on before turning back to type out seemingly endless lines of code on his screen. The room gave off the impression of a well-oiled machine, with each person contributing to the smooth overall operation. By the end of the tour, it was obvious to me that Artoo employees are capable and skilled.

Discussions with my hosts, Thuy and Mradula, and Artoo’s co-founder, Sameer, demonstrated the company’s commitment to serving BoP populations. The energy with which Thuy and Mradula explained the problem that Artoo tackles, and its solution, was exuberant; their eyes lit up as eager smiles spread across their faces. Talking with Sameer about his strategic vision for Artoo and the opportunity he recognizes to make a meaningful difference in the lives of BoP populations was inspiring. It was invigorating to engage with people who clearly care deeply about serving BoP populations.

I am grateful to the folks at Artoo for hosting me and helping me understand part of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem in such a vibrant country as India. The lessons that I learned from my visit to Artoo provided me with the experience I had hoped for as I planned my trip to India, and the opportunity to gain this exposure firsthand is invaluable for me as I continue to explore social entrepreneurship. I am especially excited for Artoo’s future, because my visit showed me that Artoo has some of the key tools for success: talent and passion.

About the author:

Rebecca Singer | Villgro's Intern

Rebecca Singer is a budding social entrepreneur interning at Villgro Innovations Foundation, an incubator for early-stage social innovation. Rebecca is currently completing her studies at Princeton University, USA, where she studies Music.

[artootrills-blog]

Artoo & Ujjivan: The six-year journey and beyond

"To support the high volume business and to meet security and compliance requirements of different regulatory authorities, strong and secure systems are required at the core. We have selected all proven softwares in Banking Technology after carefully evaluating each system for the specific requirements. We are creating a strong IT backbone for the upcoming Small finance bank." (Mr. Deepak Ayare, Ujjivan CIO)Around the same time as Artoo celebrated its 6th birthday, our long-term partner and first client Ujjivan started its journey of becoming a Small Finance Bank. The giant step was met with initial phenomenal success, when Ujjivan made its first Initial Public Offering (IPO), which was oversubscribed over 41 times and considered the most successful microfinance IPO in India’s history. At the cusp of our 6th year milestone and Ujjivan’s success we pause to reflect on our relationship with them.

                                   Ujjivan's IPO. Source: Ujjivan. The success of Ujjivan is a powerful statement about the value of providing financial services to the economically active poor, and the importance of digitizing such a business model from an early-stage. The underlying Ujjivan ethos has always been an innovative one. And it was this ethos that encouraged a startup like Artoo to build a one of a kind solution for financial inclusion.

In the August of 2014, Ujjivan successfully tested its first pilot with Artoo. Their foray into mobility solutions two years ago also marked the reinvention of the individual lending process, which was one of Ujjivan’s key market differentiators. The ambitious pilot spanned over 2.5 months, and Ujjivan disbursed 700 loans worth Rs.5 crore on Artoo's platform.

"From a strategic perspective, we definitely need a handheld solution to improve our data quality and productivity. The field users embraced Artoo's technology as it helped them reduce error rates and TAT (Turn around Time), and improve productivity. The pilot results are encouraging." (Mr. Samit Ghosh, Ujjivan CEO)

Ujjivan was always a strong visionary in advocating and pursuing digital revolution to improve its field operations and Artoo was the first to convert their vision into reality.

Individual Lending (IL) has been Ujjivan’s turning point and will continue to be a solid base for their future growth. Artoo’s LOS has been playing a key part in digitizing the IL domain, and hence Ujjivan can confidently boast of being digitally advanced in this space despite the emergence of competition.

“Basically we look at the future, growth is going to come mainly from our individual lending to the micro SME sector and also for housing… Irrespectively of competition mounting on the digital front, we are already pretty advanced in digital technology.” (From Mr. Samit Ghosh's interview on CNBC-TV18)

Today, as Ujjivan ushers into small finance banking operations, it’s decisively integrating its IT infrastructure and implementing core banking solutions by investing more than Rs.300 crore and partnering with several big names in the IT industry over the next five years. On 7th May 2016, the current and future technology partners of Ujjivan were invited to celebrate these new beginnings. This event was special because it showcased Ujjivan’s belief that technology is core to their business and how they identify themselves with innovation. It was a special moment for Artoo as we were invited to share the space with Wipro, Infosys, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, CRMNext, IndusSoft, and CraftSilicon. Veterans in the Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) domain were a prominent sight in the audience.

"To support the high volume business and to meet security and compliance requirements of different regulatory authorities, strong and secure systems are required at the core. We have selected all proven softwares in Banking Technology after carefully evaluating each system for the specific requirements. We are creating a strong IT backbone for the upcoming Small finance bank." (Mr. Deepak Ayare, Ujjivan CIO)

These words of Mr. Deepak Ayare, Ujjivan CIO reflect how he envisioned this event to be an evening in the company of all partners to meet and collectively work towards one goal, that is, help Ujjivan lay the foundation of banking-level technology with the no or few hiccups. It was obvious that everyone should see each other as partners rather than competitors.

Sameer was one of the speakers at Ujjivan's IT & Mobility kickstart for its proposed Small Finance Bank. Source: Ujjivan.

Sameer spoke about his relationship with Ujjivan at this event. He first saw Ujjivan as an intern, where Kavita was already an employee for 3 years.

“Ujjivan has been a great partner for Artoo, someone who is extremely innovative and ahead of the curve. When no one else believed in technology or smartphones, Ujjivan gave us a chance and was willing to try out something new. We identify ourselves with Ujjivan because they have become leaders from ground up. Their underlying spirit, the energy that drives them, it’s all centered around a sense of responsibility, right from the senior management to the front-line staff. We also envision our future in collaborating with other tech companies who could be our partners and allies in delivering complete digital lending solutions, besides supporting Ujjivan to be a strong technology-driven bank in the future.” (Sameer Segal)

Ujjivan's IL is now fully digitized, and Ujjivan now captures the entire end-to-end loan process in a single visit, which has been pivotal in reducing operating costs and improving productivity. It is proven that digitization is the only way forward for such businesses and that without digitizing field processes, automation of back end processes is meaningless. When mobility solutions are inclusive to the end-user, it becomes a powerful value driver for a financial institution. Artoo firmly positions itself as an undisputed leader of the digitization development in this sector.

                          Fully digitized Individual Lending at Ujjivan

Congratulations to Ujjivan for the new venture, and we’re happy to be a part of their new journey. From a pilot to a complete digital LOS, we have scaled the distance with them. Ujjivan envisions empowering the borrowers as their key strength, which also resonates with our ideologies of bringing technology and its innovations to the people who need it the most.

[artootrills-blog]

MFN 2016 Annual Meeting Report

Keynote by Sameer Segal

We invited Sameer Segal to the 2016 Annual Conference to get us closer to the emerging "fintechs" that are often a mystery to the MFIs. Sameer is the founder and CEO of Artoo, a Bangalore, India based startup that complements the MFIs by using inclusive technology to empower loan officers, improve end-to-end processes, and increase customer satisfaction. At its core, Artoo is a financial customer relationship management platform (“CRM”) that allows MFIs to manage the entire customer lifecycle from loan sourcing to post-disbursement servicing, all on a single platform. To date, Ujjivan, India´s third largest MFI, is successfully using Artoo´s technology. Sameer, the 29 year old CEO and founder of Artoo, shared his experience launching and developing this technological solution. The participants were left wondering how someone who knew little about the MF industry five years ago could come in and develop relevant solutions that serve our clients’ needs within a short period of time.

Artoo was born out of a summer internship Sameer did with Ujjivan, where he wondered why the world´s most intuitive technologies could not be applied to the bottom of the pyramid. His fresh entrepreneurial spirit allowed him not only to understand the problem and identify the opportunity to reengineer the end-to-end customer relationship process but also to come up with a valuable solution. He observed how established companies tend to automate existing processes and noted that many companies make the mistake of simply digitizing everything that is on paper and moving it to a tablet, but not enough companies spend sufficient time on thinking how a process should be redesigned once technology is involved (re-ordering steps, eliminating steps, inserting new steps etc.) 

As for the process of developing Artoo, Sameer highlighted the importance of iterative learning on building an impactful business. For example, he explained how the initial designs of the Artoo software for tablets demonstrated that it was not possible to please everyone, thus their design decision-making processes were focused on tradeoffs between the size of the device (male loan officers wanted larger displays while female loan officers cared about the weight of the device and wanted it to fit in their handbags), battery life (management wanted 8 – 10 hours) and features (customers wanted videos on the device to provide more information).

Sameer also talked about the challenge of building an entrepreneurial team, integrating people with specialized and complementary skills, and how entrepreneurs need to have skin in the game, for example, he stopped drawing his salary when in the initial phases Artoo only had 6 months of money in the bank.

Sameer is highly optimistic about the future. He is open to taking Artoo in various directions depending on how opportunities present, but at the same time he has it very clear that the company needs some strategic anchors around which it should grow. He calls these Artoo´s “north stars and guiding lights”, and defines them as three simple principles:

How do we make field staff happy?

How do we dramatically change economics of this model and its business results?

How do you radically improve the experience of the borrower?

This was a session in which we could radically contrast the speed and frugality with which an entrepreneur operates, versus the abundance of resources and slowness of mature MFIs entrepreneurial processes. We were quickly reminded of the early days of microfinance, when we were entrepreneurs finding a new business model to serve our clients. The session left us with a sense of urgency to rekindle our entrepreneurial spirit. We were also reminded that we are not alone in this pursuit, if we open our eyes to the world of financial inclusion around us there are great opportunities. We can get the best of both worlds if we are apt to find suitable partners with whom we could ally to build the solutions of the future.

Click here to read the full report.

[artootrills-blog]

2016 HasGeek Rootconf

Rootconf is an annual conference on DevOps and Cloud infrastructure spearheaded by HasGeek, which regularly conducts tech conferences and workshops. We missed an opportunity to showcase things at #rootconf about we have learned on managing Artoo infrastructure over the last year, but Shameer and I were excited to join in for couple of fun days. In addition to learning new things, we were looking forward to interact with like-minded people who were doing exciting stuff around DevOps and Cloud.

Although I am not sure if this has already happened at other HasGeek events, but this year’s rootconf had a few interesting things to offer. The RJ45 cable was used as the ID tag holder, and a swarm of new-age Bangalore food start-ups served us food in lieu of food tickets.

People often complain about food at large events; however, our options were plenty and delicious at this year’s Rootconf.

Of the talks lined up at the event, I suppose there was a concerted effort to showcase higher quality talks on varied subjects, and speakers across the globe shared their experiences and interesting projects with us.

It was delightful to be a part of some good panel discussions on DevOps and databases in parallel to the talks stream. People shared their DevOps experiences with regards to system failures, disasters, and good design practices. At Artoo, we are adding more components and functionality to our software stack and have been looking around for best practices around system design, handling failures, performance and stability of the whole platform.

Some of the key takeaways from the conference around these ideas were:

Embrace failure and try to build systems that work even amid systemic breakdowns: This espousal runs contrary to what a new engineer would try to do: write code for all edge cases and try to control all parts of the system. This was a talk by Antoine (linked below), where he spoke about how we should go about planning systems considering that they would always keep crashing or running into some issues and yet how to continue achieving their functional goals. It spoke about managing communication and state across components in a system.

Simplicity (code, organisation): Continuing from the previous talk about simple components and communication, we then got into simplicity in the organisation communication and structures. The interaction between developers and operations at Snapdeal to maximize quality and output was captured very well by Yagnik in his talk. He sympathised with the DevOps crowd quite well and had a light-hearted take on this bitter-sweet relationship. For instance, he presented a slide where DevOps people were identified as faces with a blank look and long beard (When he said this and I looked around at the audience, there were quite a few people who met this description and were now smiling). 

Look for general problem solvers (example: SRE):

This was from the DevOps panel discussions about how to approach and acquaint DevOps for people new to the field, how to hire people, etc. There were also brief references to Google's Site Reliability Engineer role specs, which were released and made public recently. The emphasis here was on looking more for general problem solvers and moulding them rather than looking for an experienced full-time rockstar DevOps person, especially for startups. It was more of a debate on whether one should hire a person with pure skills on the infrastructure part or get people with superior cognitive abilities. Aditya Pattawari from Browserstack summarized it in a few words,

 “If we are hiring 10 people for a team of DevOps, we should have 2 of them who are completely experienced and have worked on a great deal of things in infrastructure, whereas the remaining 8 can be the problem solvers with high cognitive abilities, who are quick enough to grasp teachings from the 2 experienced ones.” “Dont rely on the 2 guys to stay for long though,” he chuckled.

I was thoroughly impressed by the sheer depth of knowledge of the people around me. What personally intrigued me was their capacity to unlearn and relearn. After the talks, we spoke to some interesting people and even distributed our fancy new Artoo bookmark. A few of them had specially flown down from the across the globe for this event, and we shared and discussed our experiences.

This year’s Rootconf offered interesting insights into DevOps, food, failure, and simplicity. Look forward to more such good stuff in the future.

Inspiration from: https://rootconf.in/2016/

My personal favorite talks from the conference were:

Crash-only software (Digital Ocean, Antoine Grondin): A talk on what crash only software is, why you want it and how to implement it, with examples from large scale deployments at DigitalOcean on how to design for graceful handling of failures.

An extension to the chaos engineering from Netflix (Netflix, Diptanu): The talk introduces Chaos Engineering and focuses on how complex distributed systems fail in large scale internet services. It discuss patterns and various techniques for designing highly aperatiovailable and resilient distributed systems that can heal from transient failures.

Managing the developer to ops communications (Snapdeal, Yagnik): The talk is intended to help understand how to scale operations and developers with the help of cultural and process changes that allow you to innovate faster with higher accountability and reliability.

Continuous deployment at scale (Etsy, Premshree Pillai): Learning about optimizing everyone’s productivity and happiness while building products at scale, through software tooling and culture.

PostgreSQL and MySQL war stories (Srihari and Colin): The first talk is about the failure scenarios we designed for the Postgres database cluster, the times when the designed system failed, and what we learnt from them. The second talk is about the MySQL ecosystem, which offers plenty of solution albeit with tradeoffs and how to look at all of the alternatives in an unbiased nature.

For the complete list of talks and videos at the Rootconf

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL279M8GbNsevAmMGz5SKSGDOQdQdlhBcq

For further reading on rootconf:

https://kushaldas.in/posts/event-report-rootconf-2016.html

About the author:

Shrivatsa Swadi | A Mobile Engineer (Geek)

Shrivatsa is a full stack developer at Artoo who supervises and mentors the engineering team. He is passionate about using technology to bring changes on the ground, especially to benefit those outside the grid.

[artootrills-blog]

Artoo turns 6!

Birthdays are a time for reflection. It’s a time to celebrate the creation of an entity and nurture its existence. Artoo birthdays are always special. It’s an Artoo tradition to celebrate birthdays differently each year. Last year, it was a picnic on the rainiest day of the decade in Bengaluru, with football and barbecue in tow. True to our innovative self, this year we decided to have a video competition about Artoo’s sixth birthday. The idea was to capture our wishes and hopes for Artoo as well as showcase why team Artoo is diverse and quirky. Although we had multiple projects going on in this month, we did find time to celebrate our birthday amidst all the serious work. Our families have been our support system since Day 1. It was wonderful to have them together again for a potluck evening with all of our friends. We were very pleased that our families and friends, could come to encourage us yet again, that too with all our favourite snacks.

The evening began with an introduction to Artoo by Sameer and Kavita – the work we do and the plans for the future. We became nostalgic of the year that had passed by when our milestone slideshow played. Each one of us came up to speak about one or more memory – fund raising, scaling to 400 branches and 4000 users, field visits, conferences, our rapidly growing team, and much more. We couldn’t have felt prouder reminiscing all that such a small team was able to achieve in the last year. We ended the evening with a  video collage of – investors, advisors, people of Artoo and friends of Artoo – wishing and sharing some wonderful moments and beautiful messages. Chetana and Anubhav were crowned the winners for their impeccable parody of team Artoo. It was funny, emotional, and a proud ride for us all at the same time us.

While we deck up the treehouse with love and fervour, we look back at all that we have done in the last 6 years. The one thing that has never changed at Artoo in these six long years is doing our best to make a difference for the better. We are driven by empathy and understanding that will translate into our products and services. But what matters most now is what we do next. The future belongs to those who create it, and we are committed to building a better future and be the voice of our users. We plan to disburse Rs. 3000 crore this year. With the simple principles in doing our business which we usually call them as “North Stars and guiding lights”, we are built to last and are working on dramatically changing the business model to make field agents and borrowers happy and guide them to improve their quality of life. We long to see the day when our users are not just field agents but the borrowers themselves. In the early days of microfinance, we were entrepreneurs finding a new business model to serve our clients. Today, we feel the urge to rekindle our entrepreneurial spirit where we wish to partner with allies and build solutions for the future.

Cheers to many milestones in the making!

[artootrills-blog]

Fandry: Movie Night at the Treehouse

“Jabya hurls a stone at one of the high-caste boys, who were teasing him and his family by calling them “Fandry” (literally meaning pig). The stone is seen fasting approaching towards the audience and the film ends.” (Source: Wikipedia)

"Fandry" is an Indian award-winning Marathi film that I recently watched at the Artoo Treehouse. It is one-of-a-kind experience for me since I am originally from Vietnam, where my culture is quite different from that of my Indian colleagues. The film was specially screened to celebrate Ambedkar Jayanti, an annual festival to commemorate the birthday of B. R. Ambedkar, an Indian jurist, economist, politician, and social reformer who campaigned against social, caste-based discrimination and advocated women and labour rights.

The movie night was pretty unique. Watching the movie in an office setting awesomely reflected Artoo’s culture, where you feel the office is not like a workplace but a comfortable home where you can chill out, eat a sandwich, and watch a movie together after work. Somehow it also reminded me of my first joyful moment of experiencing a drive-in theater form.

Fandry is a powerful and poignant film that's well worth watching. Based on a real-life story, the film is rooted in reality and can be easily relatable by most of us. “It is really my own story,” says Nagraj Manjule, the film director, and it truly shows on screen.

The film is the story of an adolescent, lower-caste boy named “Jabya” who hails from a small village in Maharashtra. The story focuses on the sentimental development of his love dreams toward an upper caste girl and the crushing reality in his village. Eventually, the pitiful boy reaches his tipping point and explodes in an intense backlash against the oppressors by hurling stones at them in the closing scene. However, the stones do not only stop there. They also deliberately hit us, the audience, who are ignoring or even accepting and carrying the exploitative caste-based social system. Sadly, this horrible caste power does exist, discrimination persists among the lower class in India’s villages and cripples human moral while people worldwide are trying to protect human rights and close this inequality gap.

After finishing the movie, we stayed back a while and had a meaningful discussion, where we reflected our thoughts and feelings about the movie. Indus shared the bright side of the movie where there was a silver hope for Jabya’s love. Akanksha shared her past experience of visiting a caste-ridden village in India. Mradula posed a question on what we should do to break the conventional wisdom on the caste system and human inequality. To me, I believe in the law of causality in which Jabya suffers from our human beings’ impassible view and inexorable reaction to this social problem.

Sameer spoke of how our field agents and borrowers face similar discrimination in various forms on a daily basis. Although the field agents are the forerunners of social reform by helping people out of their poverty, they're often unappreciated or ridiculed for their work. Hence, even when they are doing good work to ease people out of their troubles, their self-esteem is low because of society's thinking that they are working in slums, it's not a desk job, and so on. It's a parallel to the movie's story and to India's story.

Diversity is one of the many shades of Artoo. The team mates come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, which has added to the rich culture and speaks of inclusivity. Working with a diverse team makes one conscious of those around us and creates empathy and understanding that translates into our products and services. This diversity has helped Artoo form a multilingual team for user support & trainings and easily understand changing aspirations. The products and services reflect dignity, empathy, self-expression, aspiration, and ambition, something our users identify themselves with.

“Fandry” movie night was one of the good times at Artoo when we set aside working and spent time to get closer personally, grow emotionally, and exchange opinions enthusiastically for a better society that we aim to build. I long to see the next film screening with Artoo team soon.

About the author

Thuy Pham | Villgro's Fellow

Thuy is an explorer and a business consultant dedicated to helping organizations, companies and enterprises in emerging and frontier markets to achieve social and economical values through strategic management tools and human centric solutions. She works with Villgro Incubatee Artoo as a Business Development Manager.