Enhances competitive edge with more applications built in 10 months than in previous 3 to 4 years
Builds customer trust by securing 99.99% uptime on all financial platforms
Enables investment in creative solution building by saving 40% in infrastructure costs
Frees engineers to focus on creative tasks by reducing DevOps staff requirements by 2 to 3 per month
SMC Finance is an Indian lender riding a wave of credit-enabled economic transformation in India. In order to keep pace with rapid change, the company moved from a monolithic infrastructure to Google Cloud and transformed its ability to serve the dreams of millions of Indian customers.
SMC Finance is an Indian lender riding a wave of credit-enabled economic transformation in India. In order to keep pace with rapid change, the company moved from a monolithic infrastructure to Google Cloud and transformed its ability to serve the dreams of millions of Indian customers.
The growth of lending in India's dynamic economy is rising at a blistering pace. With credit projected to increase by up to 15% in fiscal 2024, the lending trajectory is set to surpass expansion in the nation's nominal gross domestic product, a phenomenon attributed to factors such as economic vitality and digitalization.
SMC Finance is a non-banking financial company (NBFC) at the forefront of the credit boom that is a factor in India's emergence as an economic power, while also helping to lift the dreams of millions of ordinary Indians. As one of the nation's biggest NBFCs it currently has a loan book of roughly $150 million.
Experiencing a rapid rise in demand, SMC Finance found itself struggling with its original monolithic architecture which relied on manual code deployment and database backups. These mundane tasks, along with daily maintenance, became increasingly tedious and time-consuming, leading to rising costs over time.
The company decided it needed to move to a cloud environment to achieve the agility and automated scalability to propel its growth journey in India's competitive financial services environment. It adopted Google Cloud thanks to what it saw as seamless microservices scalability and the most user-friendly interface among cloud providers. The move was also rooted in the proactive support SMC Finance enjoyed from partner Team Computers as well as the Google Cloud team.
"As a lender enabling lives in a fast-growing market, we couldn't be held back by the constraints of our monolithic infrastructure," says Anurag Jain, SVP - IT and Operations, SMC Finance. "The transition to Google Cloud, driven by the imaginative solutions from Team Computers, not only freed us to serve a growing demand but turbo-charged our financial application building."
As a lender enabling lives in a fast-growing market, we couldn't be held back by the constraints of our monolithic infrastructure. The transition to Google Cloud, driven by the imaginative solutions from Team Computers, not only freed us to serve a growing demand but turbo-charged our financial application building.
Anurag Jain
SVP - IT and Operations, SMC Finance
Unleashing pioneering financial solutions with Cloud Run
SMC Finance had initially been considering a rival cloud provider, when Team Computers introduced SMC Finance to Cloud Run and carried out a proof-of-concept for the fully managed service to be the backbone of a newly modernized cloud infrastructure. SMC Finance was so impressed by the proactive support of its partner, and the powerful automation and seamless scalability of Cloud Run, that it decided upon a full-fledged migration to Google Cloud.
Together, Team Computers and SMC Finance designed an architecture built around Cloud Build, Cloud Run and Cloud SQL. It deployed Cloud Build to develop proprietary applications on a serverless CI/CD platform. These applications would then deploy on Cloud Run in a fully managed serverless containerized environment. Cloud SQL would then serve as the fully managed relational database that integrates with Cloud Build and Cloud Run to enable instantaneous availability of crucial data to build and deploy new applications. Security is also critical for a financial institution like SMC Finance, and it deploys Cloud Armor to safelist external vendor IP addresses.
The revamped Google Cloud architecture has enabled SMC Finance to introduce new financial functionalities and significantly enhance its in-house application development. The company created more apps in 10 months compared to the previous 3 to 4 years. The fully scalable, microservices based system has enabled SMC Finance to achieve 99.99% uptime compared to the past.
The Google Cloud infrastructure supports our real-time transaction processing and reporting through its scalable and resilient services. This is a critical advantage as we strive to develop new applications and financial products that transform the Indian credit landscape. Its managed services enable us to continuously innovate for the future of Indian finance.
Puneet Aggarwal
Solution Architect, SMC Finance
Full automation has brought down infrastructure costs by 40%, funds it can plough into creative solution building. By freeing up two to three engineers per month from DevOps tasks, the team can focus on digital solutions that serve the company's growing clientele.
"The Google Cloud infrastructure supports our real-time transaction processing and reporting through its scalable and resilient services," says Aggarwal. "This is a critical advantage as we strive to develop new applications and financial products that transform the Indian credit landscape. Its managed services enable us to continuously innovate for the future of Indian finance."
Building the future of Indian finance with Google Cloud machine learning
SMC Finance envisions its Google Cloud usage evolving to incorporate more advanced AI and machine learning capabilities for predictive analytics, enhancing automation in loan processing, and leveraging serverless technologies to further streamline operations and improve scalability and resilience. It plans to deploy BigQuery as an intelligent scalable data warehouse to enable its machine learning journey.
Beyond machine learning and AI, SMC Finance is planning to adopt Google Kubernetes Engine to further bolster the agility and resilience of its containerized microservices environment.
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence will be crucial to the future evolution of our lending platforms, enabling us to improve the speed, accuracy and personalization of our customer service," says Aggarwal. "Google Cloud solutions in this field will open up a world of endless opportunity."
Machine learning and artificial intelligence will be crucial to the future evolution of our lending platforms, enabling us to improve the speed, accuracy and personalization of our customer service. Google Cloud solutions in this field will open up a world of endless opportunity.
Puneet Aggarwal
Solution Architect, SMC Finance
SMC Finance is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SMC Global Securities Limited, registered as a non-deposit taking Non-Banking Finance Company. It started operations in 2008 as a retail credit institution that offers a wide range of loan products, including SME financing, loan against property, unsecured business loan, personal loan, receivable financing, medical equipment finance, and IPO finance to meet India's burgeoning credit requirements.
Industry: Financial Services
Location: India
Products: Cloud Armor, Cloud Build, Cloud SQL
About Google Cloud Partner - Team Computers
Team Computers is a bridge between business needs and the world of IT solutions. Based in India, it strives to be a trusted solutions partner that understands client needs and offers quality, affordable IT solutions with speed and flexibility.
