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Ricoh is one-stop solution provider for all IT needs of the BFSI sector, says Subhankar Dutt, National Business Head – BFSI, Ricoh India, in an interaction with Elets News Network (ENN)

Traditionally, Ricoh has been known for hardware products. Can you tell us about your presence in the BFSI segment?

Yes, we have traditionally been known for hardware products. However, today our breadth of experience translates into our ability to recommend, design, deploy and maintain IT infrastructure for our customers. Ricoh has transformed into a very well-equipped organisation when it comes to managing both document and print services as well as its endeavours in the field of IT and IT-enabled services. Today, we have expanded our products and services offerings and have capabilities to easily provide single point of contact for all IT products and services to totally optimise the IT environment. We have gone much more in-depth in our approach towards customer and have created specialised products and solutions customised for the needs of individual sectors. Healthcare, education and BFSI, among others, are some verticals where we are trying to implement our reach. The whole idea has been to be near customer’s focus to drive our business aligned to the needs of the customer.

When it comes to the BFSI sector, we are trying to develop vertical-specific applications. We have our footprints in all the major public sector or private sector financial institutions, be it as hardware system integrators or providing them with our own homegrown Ricoh cloud services or data services. We have a whole bouquet of services to cater to the BFSI sector currently. This is substantiated by the kind of projects we are involved in right now.

Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is a pioneering effort of the Government of India to achieve financial inclusion. How can you partner and be part of this revolution?

Today our diverse products and services portfolio and strong partnerships across the IT industry position us as a one-stop solution provider for IT needs of any government projects or citizen-centric schemes. We are fully equipped to execute projects that demand robust technology platforms for diverse geographies and scale at the moment. And probably, that is why we have been awarded the scope of work from the Department of Posts, Government of India for modernisation of the post offices across the country. It will definitely be our endeavour to replicate the same as an enabler. When it comes to financial inclusion initiative taken by most of the public sector banks that have been given the mandate, we could replicate what we are doing as hardware integrators, as a solution provider and as an end-to-end service provider to the Central Government. So, I think that could be sufficiently and successfully replicated in financial inclusion spaces.

With the government putting a lot of thrust on PMJDY, role of banking as well as insurance sector and other financial institutions will actually quadruple within the next five years

What are your expectations from the market?

The technology spends for FY2014 in India stands at `1,900 billion, and within this the share of BFSI is 13 per cent, `250 billion spend, precisely. Our IT services include IT infrastructure services including data centre solutions, network and security, virtualisation, infrastructure management and cloud software. Hence, we are excited to be part of this large and dynamic sector. BFSI sector is growing rapidly in India, and PMJDY and similar financial inclusion endeavours or financial literacy are some of the biggest opportunities. There is no doubt that it is going to be a major player in the economy. It has always been a major player, but now with  the government putting a lot of thrust on PMJDY, role of banking as well as insurance sector and other financial institutions, which are there in the eco-system, will actually quadruple within the next five years. I will not be surprised if it goes to a very high and competent CAGR level. And surely, technology providers like Ricoh and others will also grow in the whole process.

What kind of arrangement have you worked out with the Department of Posts for pushing financial inclusion in the country?

As we are a leader in the field of imaging and IT solutions, we have been choosen by the Department of Posts, along with Telecommunications Consultants India (TCIL), as the system integrators for “Rural Information & Communications Technology (ICT) – Hardware (RH)” solution, which will enable them to modernise approximately 129,000 post offices through automation. Under the Ministry of Communications & IT, the Rural ICT Project is a part of the larger IT modernisation project being undertaken by the Department of Posts.

The primary goal of the Rural ICT Project is to improve the quality of service, provide more value-added services and achieve financial inclusion in unbanked rural population. This will provide wider reach to Indian populace through more customer interaction channels. The scope of work includes supply of mobile computing devices and peripherals, installation of solar UPS, connectivity to access the application by service providers, along with maintenance for five years. We have leveraged our IT solutions suite on similar projects in financial inclusion space, like MNREGA and other similar projects. This system integration contract further strengthens our foray into IT services and showcases our ability to deliver such crucial and large-scale deployment and also contribute to the development of India.

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