Banking solutions man

TRAILBLAZER: WHO DARES WINS

Hanuman Tripathi, managing director of Infrasoft Technologies, is an active member of the governing body of the Foundation for Information Security and Technology (FIST), a non-government agency for security related issues in general, and information security related issues in particular, in India. He is also an active member of the Mumbai Police's e-Panchayat, and is an acknowledged expert on anti-money laundering techniques. He has made a successful transition from a manager to an entrepreneur, and has taken his company global.

Having worked at Trilogy Software and Nelco for a total of 14 years, Hanuman Tripathi, managing director of Mumbai-headquartered Infrasoft Technologies, had long nurtured a dream of striking out on his own and becoming an entrepreneur. In 1990-91 this started to take concrete shape in his mind, and he was quite clear that his would be a banking solutions firm. But why this narrow niche? (This was before India's software growth story had begun.) Says Tripathi: "There was lots of scope for a banking solutions company. Because of a directive by the Reserve Bank of India on bank automation, some 66,000 bank branches needed to be automated."

He conceptualized and implemented the business plan of the company between 1994 and 1995; brought the top management together and built the teams, processes and systems; built a successful company from a small equity base of $1 million; and created a market leader position for the company in SME bank segments. But, back in 1991, this was all in the future. The process of gathering a set of like-minded persons as business partners and looking for funding was a long and tedious process. Even though he was ready with most things by 1994, there was a further wait until the money was raised.

Says Tripathi: "None of us had any money, nor was the concept of sweat equity known in India, so it took us a year before we could launch operations." Infrasoft finally began operations in 1995. From then until 2000 it focused only on the Indian banking solutions market, delivering online branch banking solutions for retail banking, trade finance and eChannels. The year 2000 saw the company launch its first WAN-based eChannel Integrator, which enabled more than 900 branches of the Bank of India "" among its largest customers for this product "" to deliver multi-branch banking to customers.

The years between 2001 and 2004-2006 saw InfrasoftTech diversify into the UK, with a major solution build project from a reputed financial services house. Over the years, the blue chips of the UK financial world have become long-term customers of InfrasoftTech in the software services arena in private banking, wealth management and investment banking. The company's India Development Centre has a major share of the solutions support rendered to UK-based banks. InfrasoftTech's customers in UK include Royal Bank of Scotland, Coutts Private Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Cantor Group, Abbey International, Barclays and MAN Financials.

By 2003-4, the company launched OMNIEnteprise, a core banking solution for Indian markets. Since its long-term focus is to market enterprise banking solutions to Tier2 banks worldwide, the core banking strategy focused on providing end-to-end single technology backbone based automation for India customers too.

In 2004-05 InfrasoftTech embarked on the globalization of its banking solutions. The first success was the OMNIEnterprise anti-money laundering (AML) solution, which Tripathi ranks among the fastest growing global solutions. Its customers for AML are spread across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kenya, Nigeria, UK and USA. Some of the prominent customers are Bank Rakyat Indonesia, Rabo Bank, Canara Bank, HDFC Standard Life, First Gulf Bank, Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait, Ahli United Bank, Diamond Bank, Union Bank of Africa, Transnational Bank, Teachers Building Society and Ruche International and more. The AML solution is a fit for banks, insurance, mutual funds and securities companies alike.

In 2005-07, InfrasoftTech completed the International version of OMNIEnterprise core back office solution, with multiple front-ends for asset management, funds management, retail whole sale & investment banking.