Offering a Unified, Digital Banking Experience While educating and inculcating savings and investments among millennials

Sumit Gwalani, co-founder, epiFiTechnologies Pvt. Ltd, is offeringa banks' core services on a neatly-designed platform that is presented simply. Says Gwalani, "Financial experiences are a fragmented experience for users, especially the millennials. Millennials and GenZers are not as financially savvy and literate as previous generations. Today, with so much higher disposable income and liquidity, millennials find it harder to save. This is a behavioural challenge we are trying to tackle by making finances approachable, intuitive, and fun. We want to make the "what', the "when' and the "where' of finances simpler."

epiFi is making banking a truly personalised customer experience. Says Gwalani of their USPs, "Fi is tailored to suit the needs of working professionals between the ages of 21-29 or so. A host of features that also serve the needs of this audience are, "Ask Fi' - a search assistant on the Fi app, which is the Alexa or Siri equivalent for finances; gives you a view of your finances across your different savings accounts and also defines complex financial terminology, while giving a 100% digital experience. We are also adding investment options."

This is enabled by, "A modern cloud-native tech stack that is chosen for building a secure, reliable and scalable application. Some of the key technologies we use include Golang, GRPC, Apache Spark, Apache Hudi, CockroachDB, Terraform, etc. We have also built most things in-house - like PCI compliance, and a distributed database that guarantees an extremely high degree of security and reliability," he says.

On the learnings from Gpay, (where he workedearlier) that he implemented at epiFi are, "Like all great tech companies, we learnt that the best outcome is a result of great partnerships. We built Fi for scale. We are already ready for big numbers, as opposed to starting small and scaling up based on requirements.We don't hesitate to go the extra mile to provide seamless experiences for our users and, we have learnt to prioritise security."

This translates into a work culture, that prioritises "we over me'; nurtures, "thinking and acting like owners'; "doing the right thing' and, encourages "Fi-nesse' - a value system among Fi'ans to keep the fun and energy alive.

Gwalani is appreciative of the regulations surrounding fintech ops in India. He says, "The RBI and SEBI are thinking inclusively about the 1.4 billion Indian users; are open to innovation; have been proactive and are ensuring we are collaborating and building for India and helping raise the bar in the banking experience. There were changes made on compliances during the pandemic, to facilitate easier onboarding through initiatives such as video KYC for account opening."

On his lifelessons in building a fintech, "It is important to focus on what solves a key user problem and we are doing that by demystifying finances and maximising savings and investments for users.We offer FIT Rules –a feature that saves money on behalf of the user when an online purchase is made and,"Ask Fi', he says."

Does epiFi look to venture into Crypto? "The crypto world is vast and fast-developing, with a lot of opportunities for fintechs in general, beyond just cryptocurrency and assets. The groundwork for the innovation is in place, and now over the next few years, we can expect to see a lot of developments unfold.We are keeping our eyes peeled for developments on the regulatory front, and are waiting for clarity. Until then, we have no plans yet, says Gwalani"

On their future growth, Gwalani says, "We are looking at scaling the team size to ensure we can meet the needs of consumers in terms of product offerings; exploring and adding more partnerships across and even within banking, so our users have more offerings to explore at one place and, we have built an investment product into Fi by partnering with AMCs, and helping users invest money in mutual funds as easily as they make transactions."