Table of Contents -

● Executive Summary
● Objective
● Problem Statement
● Proposed Solutions

Executive Summary -
Objective -

Overview: At Svatantra, the focus and prime objective is to serve the families who are
underserved, financially excluded, low-income, employed in the informal sector in both rural
and urban areas. Svatantra is one the leading institutions to retain 100% cashless
disbursement from day one. Disbursement of loans directly in customers bank account. This
way, not only do the customers gain more confidence in banking activities, but are also
benefited from earning an interest on their savings.

SMPL:

Product offering is tailored to suit customer needs which is delivered to them in the most
efficient manner through innovative processes.

Products for Rural Women Entrepreneurs

Problem Statement: Svatantra in its next phase of growth is looking to leverage on its
experience over the last decade to

1. Use cutting edge technology to enhance the service experience of its customers,
reduce cost and innovate new products.

2. Look at opportunities to engage with existing customers across both its organisations
- SMPL and SMHFC to keep the relationship mutually beneficial.

Focus on growth and explore the next leg of journey for Svatantra and move towards tech-
based sales and service of its customer and enhance synergies within and amongst both the
organizations. Through tech-based intervention, the companies must target to capture
maximum share of wallet for its existing customers.

Customer Journey -
The ideal customer of Svatantra can be expected to go through the following steps.

Awareness Interest Consideration Action Retention Advocacy

The solutions outlined below for the given problem statement are focused on tapping
more customers at each stage and reducing the drop-offs.

Proposed Solutions -
● Skill Development Workshops -
One of the main reasons why customers look for micro-finance is to fund their
self-employment ideas like tailoring and baking. In order to tap these
customers and the ones who are looking to do something on their own, we can
conduct skill development workshops. At this workshop, we can focus on
specific training and offer the attendees an opportunity to start their own
 business through our loan. By conducting these sessions in local rural areas,
we can increase the company’s awareness.
● Free counseling sessions -
Along the same lines as the above solution, we can also offer free counseling
sessions for rural customers on different self-employed business ideas that
they can venture using our loan. We can take this opportunity to share more
details about the company and convert additional customers.
● Rural News Articles -
Another way to increase awareness of the company is by distributing monthly
or quarterly newspapers/magazines in the rural segments that we are looking
to target. We can publish and share the rural news articles under our brand
name to create more brand awareness and these articles can focus on the
success stories of different people who’ve subscribed to our loan.
● Interest Benefits -
In order to attract and tap more rural segment targets, we can offer interest
benefits by cutting one or two percent on the interest rates based on the
income level. This would help us convert more customers from the rural
segment.
● Loyalty Benefits -
To keep our existing customers engaged with us by subscribing for more
loans, we can offer loyalty benefits. Here, we can either choose to cut down
the interest rates or offer to cover EMI for one or two months if the customer
subscribes for subsequent loans for the same or higher amount. This benefit
can be offered to the customers based on their track record.
● Referral Benefits -
Another way to keep existing customers engaged is by giving referral benefits.
This can be done either as cash rewards or a discount for their subsequent
loans if an existing customer refers one of their friends to avail the loan. The
benefits can be processed after the first EMI repayment of the new
subscriber/referee.

● Mobile Vans -
Given that we aim to reach the underserved and low-income group where
awareness about the options available to them is a concern. We can use mobile
 vans for advertising the different products offered by Svatantra and all the
different benefits that the targeted segment can have from our services.

● Fairs and other gatherings -

In our country, every community has its own celebrations across the year. In
many places, there are fairs or “Mela” which see high footfall from the rural
populace and those engaged in the informal economy. Arranging small
sessions there can give Svatantra the visibility and the benefit of interacting
with the target market directly at the grass-root level

Reaching and Engaging the customers using Interactive and automated conversations:

One of the major challenges for any business is reaching out to the consumer, listening to
their concerns and feedbacks, understanding their needs and delivery customer value and
satisfaction. Today’s world of information system gives us many such off-the-shelf software
which can be leveraged while engaging with customers. We know that the customer has a
fairly large customer base (combined, almost 1.5 mn), mostly employed in informal sector.
For such customers the ease of conversing with the firm would be a priority. We are also
observing a digital boom in the country with the internet and smartphone reaching all areas.
Improved accessibility is driving down the acquisition costs. In this case, we can use software
(such as Juntos) which can use the rich data and experience of Svatantra to deliver automated
and interactive conversations.

- The smart software can help Svatantra ease the process by making dynamic
conversations with the current consumers and the targets.
- Another benefit of such a system is how it can be scaled without any major IT
integration. It can be used on mobile phones and is built for speed.
 - One of the most important benefits of using such technology is that digital
conversations can be used to identify the key engagement trends and common
responses. Svatantra has multiple offerings and instead of guessing what the
consumers want, we can create a space for the users to tell us the same using this very
simple to implement technology.

Using self-learning Nudge engine to help users take better financial decisions:

Nudge engine is an upcoming technology, already implemented by financial lenders in other

countries (e.g. Wizely Inc, USA). This uses the user behavior and based on the same platform
nudges them to make better financial decisions. Additionally, it gives a personalized
experience to the customer. The customer can also use this to get assistance on personalized
loans or suggestions for mutual funds for customers based on income/risk taking capability.
The customers can input their relevant information and the system can inform users on what
financial decision can be beneficial for them. Moreover, the engine will use the data and
insights generated to help other customers in making similar decisions.

- Online Small business lending

- Variable interest % based on economic status
- Loyalty benefit for existing users and membership badge
- Workshops (career consulting and training on self-employed business ideas)
- Referral benefits