JULY - 20199The trading platform was seen by firms as a tech tool, not as a business tool. But finally, when they moved it to the US, they started to get paid by the business /marketing /sales departments and not the tech dept. Market Simplified also made it possible for Venkat to move from the trading side to the `banking side' thanks to the techno-innovation that was happening rapidly within the organization. Lead by Venkat, Market Simplified has quickly established itself as a powerhouse fintech solutions provider. And has garnered a clientele that includes the who's who of global financial organizations and banks. The organization's phenomenal growth in the last decade has come because of its leader's unstinting focus on innovation and intent. And these attributes amongst a few other outstanding core values have now beenimprinted into the organizational DNA. Market Simplified also prides itself on its deep domain knowledge and best practices that are followed to enable its clients in rapid digital transformation. It's no coincidence that even this trend of neo-banking was spotted by Venkat back in 2012. And that played a big role in pioneering neo-bank transformation with a partner driven `Lego-block' model. Venkat was also was the first fintech leader to disrupt the offshore space by introducing the Outcome-driven Model of business. And was instrumental in creating an innovative global support model, `Engineered by Design', ensuring 99.99 percent uptimes as well as SaaS based ERP solutions for SMEs.The leadership team at Market Simplified has helped Venkat create a culture of innovation, agility and purpose. Values that helped immensely during India's demonetization phase when Market Simplified was able to create the highly regarded 811 app for Kotak Mahindra Bank. As the country was thrown into momentary chaos, Market Simplified was the only fintech which could understand the big picture, latch on to KMB's pain-points and deliver a solution that enabled a hassle-free implementation of `DeMo' with Digital KYC.In the last 5 years, Market Simplified seems to have matured as an organization and if anything, its DNA of intent, and insightful innovation has only become stronger. Venkat and team are excited about the current digital transformation that the fintech world is racing towards. Speaking from a swank office space in Ascendas, overlooking the Bay Area of Chennai, in South India, Venkat speaks about the next big thing that he's driving. A proprietary middleware technology called Fusion. Again, an idea that has its roots in sharp analysis and the ability to `spot a gap' in the marketplace. "Not all entrepreneurs are tech-savvy or business driven," he acknowledges, "So we came up with Fusion, a vastly improved and customizable middleware platform that can host apps from other fintech developers. This way, India's vast fintech talent pool is also able to find a global stage."The neo-banking space is buzzing with activity however there's a lot more noise that real productive activity as banks are evaluating hundreds of fintech players annually. Despite that they are unable to work with solution providers because there are a lot of complications and procedures. Banks are hence antsy about working with new partners no matter how promising the solution. And the leadership team at Market Simplified believes they have the answer in Fusion.Kountinya Sai, CMO Market Simplified, says "Fusion solves key problems because it also does discovery and evaluation to understand which fintech apps can go to a global stage. Once that is done, we curate these apps. It's a huge and fragmented market that is starting to aggregate... and the average developer can't expect to sell a standalone app for a subscription and turn a profit on it. That's the other problem that Fusion will solve. We're taking the effort to reach out to the market and discover, curate, and prepare apps for a global market. Creating a win-win situation for everyone involved."Apart from his laser-sharp business side, Venkat also has a strong spiritual side. And in fact, the `seeker' in Venkat even turned a recuperation phase into something meaningful. He came back from an injury, after a freak accident, even stronger and continued to innovate by launching a step-saver app. The Step Saver app from Fusion is an idea that came out of Venkat's passion for fitness, and marathons. The app is designed to help people work towards their well-being while helping with retirement, interest, charity, green energy, micro-savings, etc. Highly customizable, this app will also help financial orgs and banks to connect and engage with their customers and employees in a unique way. It allows users to reach their small financial goals, enabling them to save effortlessly, support charities, etc."In fact, I want the step-saver app to also be a gateway to a brokerage account', states Venkat,"I want to see the younger generation getting smarter, save better and also invest early in capital markets so that they become financially independent. This has a direct bearing on creating entrepreneurs who will eventually be the people to transform the world."Taking things, a step further, Venkat also plans to use his WBT experience to tie this to learning platform with virtual currency and delayed NYSE/NASDAQ feeds for potential young investors to get trained on `flight simulator-kind of scenarios' before starting to invest in capital markets. It's quite amazing to see Venkat and his team at Market Simplified take bold steps towards a future that they are so confident about. And it looks like they are in no mood to be any other way. "Innovation, intent and insight keeps me and my team on our toes. In the fintech world where things change rapidly, there is no other way to be" he signs off. BC
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