i-exceed drives worldwide digital banking business with Appzillon

By Anusha Ashwin Quitting a large and successful organization like i-Flex is no easy decision, but when one perceives a large headroom for growth in the digital banking and mobility space, why wouldn’t an experienced hardcore technocrat quit to turn entrepreneur. This is the story of two entrepreneurs Joseph John and Sundararajan S., who played a significant role in i-Flex Solutions that delivered core banking solutions to over 500 customers worldwide. In 2011, they teamed to create i-exceed Technology Solutions. Located in Bengaluru, with offices in USA and Singapore, i-exceed operates across two major business lines — i.e., Products (Appzillon Development Platform) and Services like Business and Finance (BFSI) consulting services, Mobile Consulting Services Performance Management and Oil & Gas Technology Services.

“The rapid changes we witnessed in the mobility and digital space caught our attention and we wanted to play a major role in this revolution that is fueling changes worldwide. Our primary focus has been in the digital banking space. Appzillon’s strength lies in its technical prowess and we have established successful clients in our focus markets. The next step is to achieve greater penetration in these markets and become a leader by increasing the number of clients that are using our offering,” says Co-Founder and Director, Sundararajan.

Appzillon for digital banking solutions

Be it a developed country or a developing country, digital solutions in banking have slowly made manual banking process nonexistent. Thus, globally, for every bank there is a need for an enterprise that delivers banking software, which provides latest solutions to ease a customer’s access to the banking account and more importantly when the customer is on the move. On the other hand, banks use solutions to reduce branch workload and branch operation costs as customers can operate their accounts from anywhere. These latest solutions provide easy tracking of customer service requests and enhance customer reach and improve their service ratings.

“To empower banks to thrive in the digital race and stay ahead of their competition, we offer industry leading Appzillon Digital Banking Suite. Appzillon Digital Banking Suite consists of pre-built banking solutions that help a bank go live with their digital initiatives in a very short time. The solutions under the Appzillon Digital Banking are Mobile and Internet Banking for Retail and Corporate Customers, Social Media Banking, Branch and Doorstep Banking, Agency Banking, Management Dashboards, Relationship Management, and Operations Workflows. The channels supported by the suite include mobile, web, SMS, and USSD,” explains Sundararajan on how i-exceed services its banking clients.

Appzillon Development Platform is i-exceed’s flagship cross-channel application development platform. It is a suite of ready-made solutions for building banking applications, executing core banking transformations, optimizing enterprise performance, and providing mobility consulting services. The ready to deploy nature of the solutions helps banks jumpstart their digital initiatives with minimal investment in development or customization.

The company’s solutions are developed using Appzillon Development Suite, a mobile application development platform (MADP), that facilitates rapid development and deployment of apps. The solutions follow a modular architecture and it offers the capability to connect to any back-end infrastructure without any invasive changes to the existing back-end applications. “They provide the agility to a bank to cater to the fast changing customer preferences. The intuitive nature of the platform abstracts the technical complexities of app development from developers,” says Sundararajan.

i-exceed has its head office, development, and support center in Bengaluru, India. The company has two wholly-owned offices in the USA and Singapore. From these three centers, the company services its clients located in all geographies and in certain markets they leverage their partners’ services.

“Appzillon Digital Banking is currently used by more than 35 banks globally, many of which are large multinational banks. The power of the platform enables banks to develop not only B2C apps, but also B2B, and B2E apps. These apps help banks to achieve a complete digital transformation. With a good set of references available in key markets, we can now penetrate further with our offerings to more clients. With its comprehensive digital solution, i-exceed is uniquely positioned to offer digital/mobile technology to potentially any bank worldwide. Considering that digital transformation is a must for any bank, i-exceed’s promise is a great offering that addresses this need,” says Sundararajan.

International clients, partners and accolades

Founders John and Sundararajan have always eyed big clients with strong international presence and it is evident through some of the large financial institutions that they cater to. Recently, they won the trust of DBS — South East Asia’s leading financial institution — to develop a Workbench app using its Appzillion MADP. The Workbench app replaced the relationship managers’ and business heads’ product catalogue and other information to clients in paper. Much before winning DBS’ trust, i-exceed won the trust of one of key financial players in Tajikistan. In 2015, i-exceed helped Spitamen Capital in Tajikistan to establish an effective solution for its internet and mobile banking needs while also updating to a core banking system. Mashreq, one among the highest performing banks with a growing retail presence in UAE, replaced database maintained on excel sheets to Mashreq Dashboard 360 App that was built using Appzillon MADP.

Confident of developing apps and dashboards for international banks, i-exceed did not overlook the opportunities that emerged in Africa. Amana Bank, the first fully Sharia compliant bank in Tanzania that operates on the principles of Islamic finance, wanted to facilitate the payment of customs duty to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) on a secure and robust platform. i-exceed rendered its solution called Tax Bank to remit customs duty through the app.

“i-exceed’s engagement in Africa has seen us successfully implement digital solutions in Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa. The nature of offerings ranges from building information dashboards for operations management in banks, core banking transformation services, and designing, developing, and deploying agricultural information systems. With regards to banking, we have provided our digital banking solutions to five banks so far and we are looking at increasing our engagement in the region over the next couple of years,” explains Sundararajan on how bullish he is about Africa’s digital banking business.

In India, i-exceed has Karnataka Bank, IDBI, KVB as its clients under the belt and much recently Ujjivan Financial Services Limited based in Bengaluru has tied up with i-exceed to deploy mobility services to their customers. In early July 2016, Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd (MUDRA), set up by the Government of India, chose i-exceed’s Appzillon to develop and deploy a mobile app that provides information and services to their customers through a simple and easy to use interface.

On the partnerships front, i-exceed has partnered with Mindtree and other leading system integrators (SI) like Wipro and HP to build and deploy mobility solutions. “An alliance with i-exceed helps our partners, generate incremental revenue, extend their geographic market and enhance their product offerings. We in turn have an opportunity to team up with inspiring organizations by our side. We are defined by our values, our partner’s unyielding alliance and faith in our organization,” says Sundararajan.

i-exceed’s clientele and partners mentioned here is brief. There are many other banks and financial institutions associated with i-exceed to satisfy their banking needs. An active participant in leading digital banking summits, i-exceed marks its presence with innovative and latest solutions. Also, as a testimonial to its success, Gartner shortlisted i-exceed as a MADP provider in its ‘Vendor to Watch’ report called Market Trends: The Journey Ahead for Rapid Mobile Application Development (RMAD) for the year 2015. Commenting on this Sundararajan says, “This is the first step of many in establishing ourselves as a key player in the mobility space. It validates the richness of our platform and enables us to reach out to large global enterprises.”

Scouting potential investors

i-exceed is yet to raise any funds, but is in the process of raising funds. The plan is to use the funds to expand into Europe and US markets and also to strengthen the digital banking platform. Appzillon Digital Banking and Appzillon MADP are the primary offering from i-exceed. Revenues are generated from platform licenses, support, and mobile consulting services. The company also channelizes its earnings by offering niche IT solutions and specialized consulting services for clients in the areas of technology transformation and performance engineering.

“We are close to 200 employees as we speak. But those numbers are changing by the day. We are expecting a 100% growth in those numbers in the next one year. We aim to be a leader in the digital banking space and have more than 500 banks using our offering globally. We have initiated talks with potential investors to raise $8 million to $10 million. It could be from one or two investors. The fund will be used to expand our product and solution offerings,” optimistically comments Sundararajan.

Outlining his further plans, Sundararajan says, “With i-exceed’s ready to deploy app for corporate banking, banks can offer the same to their corporate clients in a short period of time. So far, banks have been primarily focused on addressing the needs of the consumers. With an increase in the adoption of consumer banking, banks are now looking at offering corporate banking apps that would enable corporates to do all their transactions on their mobile device/tablets. We expect a huge adoption of mobile and tablet solutions by corporates and SME customers.”