Spice Money: Revolutionizing banking and financial services for nanopreneurs and small business owners in rural India with Google Cloud
About Spice Money
Spice Money is India’s leading rural fintech revolutionizing the way Bharat Banks, with over one million Adhikaris (nanopreneurs) offering cash deposit, Aadhar enabled payment system for cash withdrawal, mini ATM, insurance, loans, bill payments, cash collection centers for customer/ agents/ representatives of NBFC/Banks, airtime recharge, tours and travel, online shopping, Pan Card and mPoS services. The vast Adhikari network covers 95% rural pin codes, 250,000 villages and spans across over 18,000 pin codes, 700 districts and 5,000 blocks, serving over 10 crore households in India.
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Contact usSpice Money empowers nanopreneurs and small business owners in rural India through Google Cloud, by providing a secure and reliable business platform that offers digital financial services catering to the specific needs of rural citizens.
Google Cloud results
- Ability to Onboard digital partnerships at scale and drive 2x faster GTM of all first and third party products and services to end customers with Apigee
- Reduces operational cost by 2x with BigQuery
- Removes language barriers in rural villages with Speech-to-Text
- Supports secure day-to-day operations for 12 different verticals with Google Workspace
Empowers more than 100 million consumers in rural India with a secure, scalable platform
For those residing in the rural parts of India, going to the bank for a simple task like withdrawing money can be a full day’s affair or more. This is majorly due to the lack of access to basic banking and financial services as most of the villages do not have a traditional banking infrastructure or even an ATM machine. Coupled with the fact that banks only operate from nine-to-five on weekdays, people would have to miss a full day of work just to do their banking, which often means a loss of income, especially for small business owners.
Spice Money is India’s leading rural fintech company empowering merchants and nanopreneurs. Spice Money works on an asset light model by onboarding nanopreneurs also known as Spice Money Adhikaris who have been revolutionizing the way Bharat banks, by working with the Phygital Super App installed in their smartphones or laptops, from their homes or shops that requires no added cost of infrastructure. Through the Open Network for Assisted Digital Distribution (ONADD), Spice Money can onboard multiple partners and take their services to the last mile with the help of its million strong Adhikari network.
"We want to empower merchants and nanopreneurs in India using data, catering to the digital and financial needs of semi-urban and rural citizens across the country. This mission is made possible with the support of a range of technology platforms like Apigee," says Varundeep Kaur, Chief Information Officer at Spice money. Today, the company works with over a million rural merchants across more than 18,500 pincodes covering 250,000 villages and serving 10 million households daily.
Spice Money's efforts towards driving financial inclusion and financial freedom, along with its ethos in being digital-first, has led the company to being the recipient of three Google Cloud Customer Awards across the following categories:
- Financial Services, 2021
- Social Impact, 2021
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, 2021
"We want to empower merchants / nanopreneurs using technology, catering to the digital and financial needs of semi-urban and rural citizens across the country. This mission is made possible with the support of a range of technology platforms like Apigee."
—Varundeep Kaur, Chief Information Officer, Spice MoneyOptimizing cost and growing a business with BigQuery
As with all fintech companies, Spice Money relies on data. From credit lending services to helping customers make travel arrangements, the company needs to have a reliable database that’s updated in real-time. After careful consideration in search for a solution that would ensure the platform’s efficiency and performance, the team turned to BigQuery. "BigQuery was the SaaS platform we needed to grow the business in a viable way, because we didn’t have to worry about maintenance or invest in manpower to support day-to-day operations," says Kaur.
Kaur explains that the decision to use BigQuery was a calculated one. After speaking to Google architects, Spice Money was able to get insights on how to optimize cost without worrying about scalability or the computing infrastructure.
The caching options available in BigQuery are a big plus for the team because they often get repeat queries. Spice Money would get a sub-second response on queries that have been executed before, which means they get results almost immediately.
In line with their data first strategy, Spice Money has built their Salesforce platform powered by BigQuery for advanced analysis and optimization. This helps the team better understand what their customers want, identify new opportunities, and in turn, create a bigger social impact.
"As a data warehouse, BigQuery allows us to collect and store data easily, and run analytics for future projects in the pipeline," says Kaur. Spice Money regularly uses Google Analytics and Firebase, both of which work well with BigQuery. "We are currently building an in-house analytics tool, which will be powered by Pub/Sub and BigQuery, and this will help us better understand the AI and machine learning models we plan to build in the future," she adds.
The company leverages the security and access control features of Apigee, particularly leaning on effective out-of-the-box analytics, mediation and transformation, API Product feature-set and security policies powering strategic initiatives like partnering with a larger developer community to drive next-gen innovation. Kaur says, "We rolled the developer portal where we can see and control access for developers, and decide on what access goes to the operations team, simply with a few clicks. This level of granularity of access helps us in maintaining secure operations and go-to-market with newer API products quickly."
"As a data warehouse, BigQuery allows us to collect and store data easily, and run analytics for future projects in the pipeline."
—Varundeep Kaur, Chief Information Officer, Spice MoneyBuilding an intuitive app that speaks the local language
More than 6,000 languages are spoken in India, which means that language can be a barrier to accessing the best technologies in the market. For that reason, Spice Money is looking to integrate local vernaculars into their super app.
When people sign on to the services that Spice Money provides, they are often required to upload specific documents for onboarding. This can be a challenging task if all the instructions are only in English. "People in India may be used to reading official documents in English, but may struggle to understand technicalities, which affects the processes when coming onboard with us," explains Kaur.
To help ease the onboarding process and subsequent day-to-day transactions for customers, Spice Money is leveraging Speech-to-Text to build voice and audio-based assistance in multiple languages. While still in its early stages, Kaur shares that adding such a feature would be a key differentiator for the company. "If a new merchant comes onboard and isn’t sure of how to use the application, a voice-based assistant can guide them on what to do next, and when the transaction is successful, they would be able to hear in their most commonly spoken language that it is complete," says Kaur.
Enhancing security with Google Workspace
Being in a heavily-regulated industry, Spice Money needs to ensure they have the highest level of protection against data leakage. On top of that, it is constantly expanding its service offering, so maintaining data security is a key priority.
In January 2021, the Spice Money team decided to move to Google Workspace Enterprise for its Cloud Identity features, and benefit from the unlimited storage provided with the subscription. "Apart from leveraging the security features, the ease of use and access to Drive has been a huge plus point for us," says Kaur. She adds that since migrating to Google Workspace, it has become "an inherent part of life," and teams no longer need to invest in other work-related software.
While the details are still under wraps, Kaur shares that there are plans in place to integrate augmented reality and virtual reality into their super app in the near future, with Google Cloud as a partner. "What’s great is that Google doesn’t just take security into account, but also the convenience and user experience. This is why we had scored Google Cloud much higher than the other solutions we had evaluated."
"What’s great is that Google doesn’t just take security into account, but also the convenience and user experience. This is why we had scored Google Cloud much higher than the other solutions we had evaluated."
—Varundeep Kaur, Chief Information Officer, Spice MoneyTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Spice Money
Spice Money is India’s leading rural fintech revolutionizing the way Bharat Banks, with over one million Adhikaris (nanopreneurs) offering cash deposit, Aadhar enabled payment system for cash withdrawal, mini ATM, insurance, loans, bill payments, cash collection centers for customer/ agents/ representatives of NBFC/Banks, airtime recharge, tours and travel, online shopping, Pan Card and mPoS services. The vast Adhikari network covers 95% rural pin codes, 250,000 villages and spans across over 18,000 pin codes, 700 districts and 5,000 blocks, serving over 10 crore households in India.