Editor’s note: InfrasoftTech provides core banking, microfinance and anti-money laundering software solutions for the global banking and financial services industry and focuses on enhancing banks’ reach through e-channels. Hanuman Tripathi, co-founder and group managing director, discusses the global market for his company’s products and shares information for other entrepreneurs about the risks involved in product development decisions. This article is brought to SandHill readers in partnership with ProductNation.
SandHill.com: How did your company originate; what led you to know you had a winning vision?
Hanuman Tripathi: The blueprint of current-day InfrasoftTech was written over a single 24-hour meeting between my co-founders and me sitting at a suburban five-star hotel in Mumbai in November, 1994. Once the writing pads were full late in the night, the final blueprint was completed on hand tissues! After months of negotiations, we finally got started in July 1995 in Mumbai, India.
I previously worked for 20 years in the banking software and solutions space and, prior to that, about 10 years in IT and the Telecom sector. I worked with reputed business houses in senior positions before starting InfrasoftTech 17 years ago. At the time of conceptualizing InfrasoftTech, I selected other co-founders and core team members who are qualified engineers in the space of software technology, software development, software services, all in the banking automation space.
The name InfrasoftTech was derived by merging the words infrastructure and software together. Our core banking solution caters to boutique banks or SME banks by physical size of operations, although the product or architecture does not restrict scalability. The rest of our products are used by blue chip and SME financial enterprises alike. Our software services are used by top-of-the-line financial brands in every market.
SandHill.com: You launched your company 17 years ago and now have over 200 customers worldwide in the banking and financial services industry. What was your path to globalization?
Hanuman Tripathi: We have a strong market presence in the product space of core banking, microfinance and anti-money laundering. Our first target market was domestic banks, fulfilling their rapid automation needs. After 2000, our globalization process commenced and we added the U.K., Middle East, Africa and South East Asia to our client list. We also have a growing presence in Canada and the USA.
Globalization has been our biggest challenge to date, which is not uncommon. We needed to continuously innovate, and also acquire market leadership in several spaces.
SandHill.com: Please describe your product.
Hanuman Tripathi: InfrasoftTech is one of the few companies globally who have created a unified, single technology architecture that delivers a fully integrated front-end, middleware and back-end application that can automate banking and other financial services businesses. This architecture is known as the OMNIEnterprise™ suite of solutions.
The individual products are Core Banking Solution, Anti Money Laundering & Financial Crime Surveillance Solution and a Microfinance Solution. We also have a full-fledged working Islamic Finance Solution. All our products inherit fully integrated online operations automation delivered in the architecture and carry state-of-the-art business processes as required in the individual systems.