Design credits: Sheetal Patil
If there’s anything you need to know about me, it’s that my world revolves around two very important things: people and the problem space. And if you know me even a little bit, you’ll know that work is a huge part of my life. So, it should come as no surprise when I say that I have the most fun when building products with a world-class team!
Having spent the last 20 years in the US, you could say that I’ve pretty much been through it all. Right from the dot-com bubble where the industry was HOT and even before I graduated, I was being plied with obscene offers but something told me to focus on learning and investing in myself. Sure enough, the bubble burst shortly after I graduated. As luck would have it, my wife-to-be happened to be working at Microsoft and after a brief and exciting stint in the start-up sector, I decided to move to Microsoft. Of course, I tell my wife that she’s the reason I moved (and, of course, it’s one of the reasons), but the truth is that I thrive in intense environments.
Microsoft at this time was building products like Vista, XP and SP2/Windows Server 2003 and turned out to be just the place for me. That is, until I decided to move to BankBazaar. A move which promises to be both exciting and challenging.
Before I talk about why I decided to join BankBazaar, I’d like to talk a little about Cortana and the idea of digital personal assistants. Cortana is Microsoft’s very own digital assistant and the launch of Cortana was a blockbuster release at Microsoft. It combined AI, speech, search and the integration of these functionalities into different apps and components on the Windows OS.
The reason Cortana and, more specifically, the idea of personal assistants is important is because it is bringing about a paradigm shift in the industry. The idea initially is to satisfy reactive queries, geolocation reminders, etc. But the real meat is in proactive use cases and task completion. Speech and NUI (Natural User Interface) is going to be the way forward as we naturally interact with systems in a task-centric way. This is evident from the plethora of agents like Cortana, Alexa, Google Now and Siri.
Speech aside, the interesting science is how we infer user intent, looking through tons of user activity and how to simplify task completion. The most successful companies of the next decade are going to be folks that get user intent right and push contextual and relevant information to simplify tasks. ‘Appification’ and a user going to an app to complete a sub-task is so last decade. Today, convergence is happening around task completion. People won’t care about apps, they care about tasks. With hundreds of apps on a user’s phone, they hardly bother with any but the most compelling ones. This is why things like browser extensions and deep OS integration are becoming so powerful and interesting.
A company like BankBazaar is uniquely poised to take advantage of this paradigm shift. Today, we are getting better and better at completing reactive tasks by allowing users to access and purchase the best financial products. The next step is to build a user profile, truly understand and infer intent and proactively provide contextual and relevant information that helps task completion. This understanding of the user will not only increase conversion rates, but will allow us to run long-term campaigns for the user in a way that adds significant customer value.
This will also help us be extremely focused and personalised when proactively reaching out to the user. The possibilities are endless and the problem space is exceptionally interesting. There are a few companies in the world that will get this right. BankBazaar promises to be one of them. Our singular focus of the financial domain puts us at an advantage because of the data that flows through our systems. To achieve this, we need to tear down the walls, teams need to work cross-functionally and feel empowered to own their product end to end.
The leadership at BankBazaar is exceptional and as I meet more and more people, it confirms my notion that great people attract other great people and that sets up a virtuous cycle. I love to build great teams, grow people and solve hard problems. If anything could make me join a new enterprise, it is this.
I’m really looking forward to an exciting journey with BankBazaar!
Check out job openings at BankBazaar or email your CV to opportunities@bankbazaar.com