Why Can’t We?
The story of Bank-Genie began with a simple question ‘Why can’t we?’. It was in 2015, when Ram Sharma, CEO of Bank-Genie, was in transit at Qatar airport. He had learnt of a problem faced by a bank.
He processed it for a while and asked himself a simple question ‘Why can’t we develop the solution?’
The ball was set in motion. The solutions, he realised, was in a continuous simplification of the banking process and a sustained technology infrastructure to support it.
His key purpose was, at one level, to help to banks break the traditional approaches in banking with technologies that will eventually lead to branchless banking, and at another yet deeper level, to create a banking product to serve the unbanked who resided in remote areas. He knew his products must be made available to all banks irrespective of size and applicable to the banking needs for all - the banked, the underbanked and unbanked.
Meanwhile, in another part of India, was a young mind, Raghu, who lived in the rural south of India. His journey towards innovation began when he was tasked to switch on the water irrigation system for his farm every morning. This involved a walk of several kilometres. He solved this by using an old Nokia handset and a SIM card stuck to a small chip. He programmed it to switch on with a missed call and switch off with another missed call. Thus, began his journey towards innovation which later saw him in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most apps developed in a day.
Ram and Raghu soon embarked on this journey together - a serial entrepreneur and a serial developer. After much trial, error, tribulation and innovation, their first success story was in Ghana. Once this was successfully implemented, it resulted in more banks in Africa and the footprint expanded to South East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and Russia.
Whilst the journey continues it always seeks to answer the question ‘Why Can’t We?'