The worldwide financial environment has been slowly changing thanks to the financial technology industry. Since its start, the fintech sector, which provides rapid, inexpensive, and transparent financial services, has grown tremendously. The sector has been at the forefront of solving many complex issues and problems for the international finance industry.

Co-founded by ex-bankers, IBSFINtech helps CXOs, finance leaders, and heads of treasury resolve critical challenges such as cash and liquidity management, currency (FX) risk management, investment (money market), innovative trade finance, commodity management, borrowing management, and supply chain finance.

IBSFINtech has established a distinctive position for itself in this specialized area of the corporate treasury by offering top-tier technological platforms to businesses all over the world. Serving businesses of all sizes, the firm provides an award-winning comprehensive, integrated, and innovative platform that enables CxOs and Treasurers to increase visibility, improve control, reduce operational risk, promote automation, and boost organizational effectiveness.

The business offers both on-premise and SaaS solutions, allowing total digitalization for the corporate finance function’s whole lifecycle. The company is trusted by marquee global operations, including 300+ entities globally, including, Lagata UK, an MNC, GAIL (India); the Govt. of India’s natural gas company, Vedanta Group, the world’s largest mining company; Wipro Enterprises, a leading consumer goods company; Mphasis, one of the top global IT companies; and so on.

Under CM Grover’s – the Managing Director and CEO – stellar leadership, IBSFINtech established a leadership position in the country and has been recognized as one of the top 10 players globally.

After spending almost two decades in a public sector bank, across retail, corporate, and treasury verticals, Chandra Mohan took the reins at IBSFINtech in 2010. Since then, he has led the digital transformation journey for a large number of corporates in Treasury, Risk, and Trade Finance, steering the company to unprecedented success.  Growing the company at an accelerated pace, he has been building and executing a growth-driven strategy that involves forging critical partnerships and managing market dominance, while delivering innovation for customers and channel partners.

A humble personality with rooted background and passion for TreasuryTech, his vision is to make IBSFINtech a global leader in this niche yet very critical space for Corporations.

The following are key points from a thorough interview between the CIOLOOK INDIA team and Mr Grover, who emphasize the factors that have made the firm a leading global player in the segment:

What was your inspiration behind venturing into the niche you are catering to?

The journey for IBSFINtech started when we realized there was a huge gap in the market for corporate treasury solutions, which led to the inception of the product. Sub-prime in 2008 further strengthened our vision, and the product was developed in-house with the hands-on expertise of our team to cater to the neglected corporate treasury function.

Over 16 years ago, when the company was formed, most of the corporations regarded the treasury function as a cost center, and their objective was to just mitigate the risk.

With time and owing to the volatile economic conditions, the Treasury has transformed into a strategic profit center for organizations. Even today, many multibillion-dollar corporations manage these critical functions using spreadsheets.

We at IBSFINtech led the journey of educating the CxOs that they should rely on a robust, intelligent, and technology-driven platform to manage their risks. We proved that depending on spreadsheets, which are prone to manual errors and redundancy, could be detrimental to the corporation.

With experience in both finance and technology among our leadership, we grew quickly from providing treasury to the country’s leading media house in 2013 to having 50+ implementations today, catering to very large corporates and established brands across the country. Right from the largest car maker in the country, Maruti Suzuki, to the largest steel manufacturer, JSW Steel, to the AC giant, BlueStar; to the cable industry leader, Polycab, we cater to marquee corporates of the country across industries. Recent additions to our prestigious client list include Vedanta Group, Wipro, Dabur, Mphasis, and many more.

What were the initial challenges after venturing into the industry, and what are the challenges now?

IBSFINtech has proven its mettle by establishing itself as the leader in this niche domain in the world’s toughest market, India. Being a B2B player in this TreasuryTech space, the initial challenge was the journey of educating the CxOs to replace spreadsheets and leverage a robust decision-making platform for a corporate’s critical treasury function. It took time, but with our core team’s hands-on expertise in treasury and technology, this hurdle was gradually overcome.

Being a niche and premium segment, finding the right talent was another challenge. However, with an increase in awareness of Treasury automation, led by IBSFINtech, today we receive multitudes of talent looking to join our progressive growth journey.

Today, IBSFINtech is at the forefront, leading the transformation of the cash and liquidity, treasury, risk, and trade finance functions of corporations globally by leveraging the power of technology. We have established that digitization and automation are going to be the only way forward for corporations to ensure better control, visibility, and transparency of their exposure to various risks, including but not limited to compliance, financial, and operational risks.

What services/solutions/products do you provide to your clients?

We provide a comprehensive, integrated, and innovative platform for the complete digitization of the Cashflow, Liquidity, Treasury, Risk, Trade Finance, and Supply chain finance functions of corporations globally.

The platform enables the CXOs and treasurers to enhance visibility, improve control, mitigate operational risk, drive automation, optimize business efficiency, and ensure business continuity. Our solution is an ‘all-in-one’ product, covering multiple asset classes, multiple currencies, multiple locations, and multiple companies.

The product portfolio of the company comprises on-premise and SaaS platforms. You can find complete details about our product offerings on our website: ibsfintech.com/solutions/

What are the immersive benefits of the services/solutions/products that you offer?

IBSFINtech’s comprehensive risk management solution benefits the board and CxOs, as well as the Treasury Leaders in the corporate world, by empowering them with decision-making capabilities, efficient risk management capabilities, and enhanced cost optimization initiatives. The most critical benefit is to transform the critical functions of Treasury, Risk, and Trade Finance with end-to-end digitization and automation. By way of this transformation, the end-to-end workflow of these functions is made more efficient and productive.

Moreover, the solution’s key value propositions extend much beyond just automation and include the following to enable this holistic digital transformation of the corporates.

1. Transparency, Control, and Visibility – The most critical benefit of the IBSFINtech platform is complete transparency, control, and visibility of corporate finance operations.
2. Process Efficiency: Moving from manual to automated with built-in maker-checkers and other business and policy validation makes the work processes more efficient.
3. Data integrity: Data integrity is of paramount importance in today’s world. The system enables a single moment of truth for the top management, therefore ensuring data integrity across the Treasury and Trade Finance function of the corporate.
4. Information Symmetry: The market is too volatile for delayed decisions, hence, real-time is the need of the hour. The solution connects with external systems to have real-time consolidation of data, which drives the single moment of truth and therefore improves the decision-making capabilities of the top management.
5. FTE Optimization: With data flow from external systems and within the Treasury Teams (Front Office to Back Office), reviewing, authorizing, or performing compliance validation becomes easier, avoiding duplications and adjacencies. With a reduction in duplications and redundant manual work, corporations can drive full-time employee optimization and also optimize costs by removing redundant resources. In the absence of a solution, it is almost impossible to identify redundant resources.
6. Business Enabler: The platform provides dashboarding for CxOs, which enables them to take appropriate decisions at the right time. Right from trending and charting to making informed decisions on the core hedges and view-based hedges, this platform becomes the intelligent decision support system for the CxOs and ultimately plays a pivotal role in driving business continuity.
7. Trusted Middleware: With the innovations of APIs and Open Banking, it is imperative to make applications more seamlessly connected, and with proven capability, the solution has enabled STP between ERPs and banks to become a reality.

Overall, IBSFINtech serves as the TreasuryTech partner for corporations that use our platform.

IBSFINtech becomes the corporate’s growth partner by providing an entire suite of products and features that cover treasury and trade finance operations, allowing them to scale their operations and focus on treasury optimization strategies.

How do you envision further strengthening of IBSFINtech’s stronghold in the future?

We are disrupting the corporate treasury ecosystem and have established ourselves as a leader in this space in India. We have experienced phenomenal growth in recent months as it strives to become a global corporate TreasuryTech provider.

We are strengthening our global position through a three-pronged strategy, continuous product innovation, global expansion, and building a strong partnership network.

Being a product company, we are continuously innovating to stay ahead of the curve and provide the best technology solutions to our customers. The demand for digitization of corporate Treasury, Risk, and Trade Finance has multiplied, so we have expanded our SaaS product offerings with InTReaXTM – SaaS TMS and VNDZY® – Supply Chain Finance and Beyond. It has always remained ahead of time and has been investing in the research of new technologies like AI, ML, RPA, and Blockchain to stay ahead of the curve and continue to offer cutting-edge solutions for this segment.

IBSFINtech continues to expand its footprint across the globe. As part of our growth strategy, in addition to retaining our leadership position in the country, we intend to set up our presence in the US, Singapore, and Dubai to expand our foothold in these global regions.

We have built a robust ‘connected ecosystem’ to create tremendous value addition for the end customer, i.e., corporations, as well as for the stakeholders in the entire value chain.

With this three-pronged strategy, we are progressing towards becoming a global leader in this niche space of TreasuryTech and empowering corporations globally with a robust treasury management platform.