Gold is considered a dependable asset in times of crisis apart from being the traditional investment option, particularly in India. It exhibits some key characteristics to make it an attractive investment and collateral option as well. Often viewed as a proxy for broader commodities as it is one of the most easily recognizable and value-loaded objects, people seek to possess gold as much as possible. Rupeek, a gold loan lending platform makes the job easy for gold buyers with automated systems available for appraisal and loan approval. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Japan Doshi, Head, Product and Technology, Rupeek.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

Rupeek is India's leading asset-backed digital lending platform. It offers gold loans to customers both at the doorstep and nearby branches at the lowest interest rates in the industry. Rupeek's product and tech-led platform make it simple, fast, and transparent for customers to secure gold loans without stepping out of the comfort of their homes. Customers can digitally apply for a loan and get the money disbursed in their account within hours through Rupeek's platform. Rupeek also offers other financial products backed by gold such as Rupeek Quick. Rupeek Quick is an overdraft product where customers can withdraw money as and when they need, for a range of use cases such as online shopping and utility bill payments, and only pay interest for the amount withdrawn and the duration of withdrawal. We are soon planning to launch gold loan kiosks in Bangalore, where customers can walk to the kiosk, submit their KYC details, deposit their gold and walk out in just a few minutes. Customers get money disbursed in their account within a few hours after Rupeek completes the appraisal of gold without having customers wait during this process.

2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company.

More than 95% of Indians' net worth is in some form of physical assets such as gold, real estate, and vehicles. Rupeek's mission is to monetize physical assets and make it easy for millions of people to get access to credit. Rupeek started its journey with a focus on gold as an asset class. Indian households have a unique relationship with gold holding over 25,000 tonnes. Only 5.5% of this gold is used to obtain formal credit due to friction involved in the process of getting credit and the fear of losing gold.

Rupeek solved this problem over the last 5 years by providing doorstep gold loans and transforming the way gold loans are disbursed in India. More than 1 lac customers across 60+ cities now use Rupeek's digital platform to avail gold loans. The gold loan category alone is estimated to be at USD 20Bn in annual disbursement. This is just a start and Rupeek intends to launch much more innovative, tech-led, financial products spanning multiple asset classes in near future. Rupeek is backed by investors such as Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Bertelsmann, and GGV Capital.

3. Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how they get value out of it.

Rupeek's simple, fast and transparent experience to avail gold loans is industry-first. Historically, the gold loan industry has operated with exorbitant interest rates, lack of transparency, and cumbersome processes leading to stigma and delays for customers. Rupeek provides the lowest interest rates for gold loans in the industry starting with 0.49% /month making it super attractive for anyone looking for a loan. Rupeek's product and tech-led platform ensure customers can apply for loans digitally with just a few clicks within Rupeek's app.

In the backend, we use a lot of data and analytics to figure out which agent to send to customers' homes based on the clusters in a city to fulfill our 60 minutes promise. Our appraisal process is also very quick and efficient as we leverage a ton of data, analytics, and machine learning in the backend to assess the value of jewels and instantly disburse money to customers. Rupeek ensures customers' gold is safely secured in our smart DNA packets and transported to nearby bank vaults. Customers can also easily make repayments for their loans, view jewels pledged for their loans, and release all or part of jewels whenever they need them for festivals or other occasions with just a few clicks within Rupeek's app. This becomes a hassle-free experience for customers where the entire process of getting the loan and releasing jewels when they need it becomes super easy without having to step out of the comfort of their home. Our customers love the product and the end-to-end, hassle-free experience, which is reflected in the 65% customer repeat rate on our platform.

4. How do you plan to revolutionize the Indian market and what are your plans to tap the market?

Our mission is to monetize physical assets held by millions of Indians and achieve a massive unlock of credit contributing to India's GDP growth. Traditionally, getting a loan against collateral like gold is seen as a rainy-day activity and has a stigma attached to it. Rupeek aims to change this by building a range of financial products backed by gold and other collateral to unlock credit and improve the lifestyle of millions of Indians. Customers who have gold seek gold loans when there are no other alternatives left to get access to money for use cases such as paying for education, medical bills, or other emergencies. This has meant only a small percentage of $1.3 trillion worth of gold in India is monetized.

Rupeek aims to build credit products such as overdrafts, credit cards, and interest-earning products which incentivize customers to store their idle gold and get more value out of it. Our early data shows that customers are happy to get credit lines by storing gold with us and using the asset-backed credit line for a range of use cases such as online shopping and utility bill payments to upgrade their lifestyle. We want every Indian household who possesses gold and other assets to put them to work for themselves in the form of unlocking credit and upgrading their lifestyle.

5. What is the reason behind organizations using IoT/analytics/ big data /ML in a big way?

Every organization is dependent on technology to deliver a better customer experience, operate efficiently and achieve scale. The recent advances in technology and cloud computing have made it easier for companies of any size and scale to leverage big data, analytics, ML, and IoT to build innovative products and services. Companies are increasingly relying on data collected from millions of customers to deeply understand how customers are using their products and services. This data is so vast, that it is meaningless unless you apply big data and analytics to drive meaningful insights to continuously improve your products and services to acquire and retain customers. For example, fintech companies can collect customers' data about their bank statements, spending, shopping, and credit score to determine how much credit to give to customers based on their ability to pay. As companies scale their products, the quantum complexity of data increases making it humanly impossible to keep mining data through humans to keep updating their products and services. This is where ML comes into play where companies build ML models which can take in hundreds of thousands of attributes of data and automate decision-making to achieve an optimal business outcome. The same fintech can build underwriting models using thousands of attributes and millions of customers' data to reduce a company's non-performing assets (defaults). Companies with operationally heavy business models such as e-commerce, logistics, banking, and fintech can also leverage IoT in a big way to optimize the delivery of products to customers eliminating the need for having a large human workforce. Imagine how e-commerce companies use robots to automate most of the warehouse processes reducing the need to hire a massive human workforce to power their operations. In today's world, I do not see any company succeeding in a big way without leveraging big data, analytics, ML, and IoT.

6. Could you highlight your company's recent innovations in IoT /analytics /big data /ML?

There are many innovations, but the one I am very proud of is our Kiosk product. This is a fantastic example of a disruptive innovation, which we have recently launched under the pilot, leveraging IoT, visual image processing, ML, and big data. The idea for Kiosk was to massively simplify how customers avail of gold loans by making the entire process self-serve and super quick. The traditional processes involved our agents working with customers to collect a lot of data, fill out paperwork, conduct in-depth physical jewel inspection and appraisal, pack gold in the pouch, and then disbursing money to customers' accounts.

The idea with the Kiosk was to reduce this entire process from 2-3 hours down to 10-15 mins. This Kiosk is powered through cutting-edge technology. The Kiosk interface allows customers to start the loan application process with just a few clicks. As soon as the customer is ready to deposit the gold, the gold deposit shutter opens up where customers can deposit gold. The customer gets the receipt and walks out with money in their bank account.

Behind the scenes, there is a lot of technology at play. Kiosk has a robotic arm that picks up jewels, moves around, weighs on a scale, captures images, and sends all the data to the back end for appraisal. In the future, the robotic arm will be capable of further improving appraisal accuracy during purity tests. In the back end, a lot of data crunching happens mining large amounts of data and images and our agents are presented with insights about the appraisal. This information helps agents underwrite and approve the appraisal amount.

We are now working on building ML models to further automate underwriting and replace human-based decision-making with machines while optimizing default risk. This is how IoT, big data, and analytics have massively simplified customer experience and automated the entire gold appraisal process allowing us to scale and expand our footprints across India. There are many examples across the company where big data, analytics, and ML have helped us acquire customers at a lower cost, retain high-quality customers, experiment with pricing to improve our revenue and margins, improve our underwriting capabilities and achieve efficiency across our business.

7. What would you advise aspiring big data and analytics candidates?

Big data and analytics have become mandatory skills for any company to survive these days. Employees who are in careers outside big data and analytics are expected to have proficiency in dealing with data and analytics. The basic skills of discovering data, transforming and storing data, querying data, and spotting trends and patterns are a must for anyone aspiring to grow to leverage big data and analytics.

However, what will stand you apart is your ability to think from first principles. Build a deep understanding of the domain and problem statements you are dealing with. Immerse yourself in data and have the right data at your fingertips. Derive insights from mining large amounts of data and build a capability to establish hypotheses to solve those problems. Those who can establish hypotheses and then identify and run lots of experiments to prove or disprove hypotheses in a constant search to solve problems and achieve business outcomes will stand themselves apart from the rest.

Another key skill you should build is the ability to visualize and present your data in a sharply articulated manner. In a world where there is so much data, people you work with (specifically senior leaders) may get lost if you don't optimally present your data. You want to be the one presenting trends and insights and tell a story backed by data enabling you to generate a larger impact. And lastly, build mechanisms to audit your data over and over. If data is not audited continuously, and if proven wrong, you will lose credibility.