By Lancelot Joseph. Executive Editor, Business India

“We want to make SaaS (Software as a Service) affordable to all banks to make financial inclusion meaningful,” says Harshvardhan Pusala, founder and MD of Bengaluru-based Tecurate Systems Private Limited. The idea is to democratise digital banking solutions from small cooperative banks to big financial institutions at low or no cost, he explains. In fact, the cost could be as low as an employee’s salary. Speed matters and that is where digital platforms such as Tecurate come in. “We have rolled out the SaaS for a cooperative bank in less than a week and we can now do it in a day or two,” Pusala claims.

Fresh with a BE in computer science from the Annamacharya Institute of Technology at Nellore in Andhra Pradesh in 2004, he landed in the Silicon Valley of India searching for a job. He started his career as an implementer of core banking solutions at I flex Solutions, the previous avatar of Oracle Financial Services. He was subsequently posted in Nigeria and travelled to 14 other countries in Africa doing the same job for about a decade. “The experience in Africa made me think of starting up on my own and being different,” he says as he narrates his journey as a start-up offering products, rather than services in Africa.

Contrary to perceptions, Africa is quite advanced in terms of accepting technology, he says. In fact, the digital and mobile banking solutions that we see in India now existed in Africa 10 years ago, according to Pusala.  “So, we thought of launching Tigiverse a digital service platform that embodies an ecosystem of product modules curated to effect a complete digital transformation of enterprise in the financial services industry offering a wide range of services from mobile to internet banking to the evolving Web 3.0 and Metaverse space. “You see, it was much easier to start operations on a familiar turf,” he chuckles.

“We appreciate Tecurate for joining NFC in all our digital banking initiatives in agency banking, wallet and USSD banking,” says Ebaneck Lawrence, director National Finance Credit (NFC) Bank, Zambia. “This is going to help NFC in expanding its retail business exponentially,” adds Lawrence.

With Tigiverse, the routing and document storage for audit and compliance are managed by an integrated workflow and document management system and all this is integrated with other digital systems like chatbot, CRM, and card management systems. It automates all the middle and backend processes, ranging from simple onboarding to e-KYC, fund transfers, deposits and withdrawals, bill payments, settlements & clearances and reconciliation.

This platform proved to be a hit in Africa where Tecurate acquired more than 20 clients and with India embarking on digital banking, the company began focusing on business in the motherland. It launched Tigiverse at Nagpur Nagar Sahakari Bank and is in the process of implementing it at Bharat Cooperative Bank and a couple of other cooperatives.

We have the tested and trusted platform ready and are ready to scale it up,” says Pusala as he gets set for targeting 100 customers globally. “Our SaaS is going to be sovereign and country specific as we are tying up with over 250 data centres across the country.” Asked about data security, he says: “Secrecy and privacy is important as every customer’s business is paramount to us.”