CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr Karan Desai, Founder, Interface Ventures
Could you share more about the journey of establishing the company and its mission within the fintech industry?
Interface Ventures was born from the objective and mission of building a platform that incubated and promoted multiple long-term initiatives in the financial services domain. The company is a culmination of almost 2 decades of professional experience and aims to leverage and monetise the extensive network that we have built in the industry.
Securing substantial sanctions from leading financial institutions is an impressive feat. What factors do you attribute to Interface Ventures’ success in navigating the complex financial landscape and obtaining these sanctions?
One of the cornerstones of our success is the goodwill and reputation we have built for ourselves over the last 2 decades of professional experience in the industry. Apart from this, another USP we enjoy is that we have deep experience of having built and operationally run a lending business ourselves which gives our clients and funder partners a lot of comfort and confidence.
Interface Ventures has been actively involved in incubating fintech innovations such as Indirow, Indibook, and Indivest. How do these platforms contribute to reshaping individuals’ engagement with financial services, and what sets them apart in the market?
Each of our platforms was built with a fairly clear philosophy on the end user segment and how we planned to onboard customers on them. We follow a collaborative approach and operate a B2B2C client acquisition strategy with each of our stacks thereby giving our customers confidence that we are offering them our fintech platform in collaboration with a partner that they already trust for some alternative product / service. Our platforms are “phygital” in the sense that they offer a good combination of slick technology, and personalised offline service to our customers to ensure that we can cater to clients across classes and use cases.
Could you elaborate on Interface Ventures’ investment strategy and how it identifies promising ventures for exponential growth within the fintech sector?
Interface Ventures is fairly heavily invested in its operating fintech business where it plays an active role in building and growing the business on a daily basis. On the passive side, we normally invest in companies that we know fairly well already and do business with on a regular basis. Such investments are guided by a combination of people and the business where we take long term positions in the company and try and add value to the Promoters wherever possible.
Wat challenges have you encountered in fostering innovation within the financial sector, and how has Interface Ventures addressed or overcome them?
The biggest challenge in the financial ecosystem today is the pace at which things are changing. While this is a great opportunity, it is also fairly challenging since models, the tech stack, etc. need to be constantly evolved to keep pace with peers who may be much better funded than us. Throw is the increasing regulatory oversight of the sector and it is a fairly complex maze to navigate and succeed in. Our biggest strength is the fact that technology is in-house for us and hence constantly upgrading the platform to keep up with new market trends is something we manage reasonably well.
Can you share any insights or lessons learned from your experience as a founder and leader in the fintech ecosystem that might be valuable to aspiring entrepreneurs in this field?
One off my biggest takeaways over the last 2 year journey are the fact that having technology development in-house is absolutely imperative to building a robust fintech organisation. This is simply because redundancy is so high in this industry and new developments happen every day. If one wants to stay ahead of the curve with new tools like AI, meta, etc., it is key to have technology in-house and not outsourced to a vendor where one can burn a significant amount of capital, and yet not have control over the process.
Finally, what advice would you give to individuals or organizations looking to innovate and make a significant impact within the financial sector, based on your own journey with Interface Ventures?
My suggestion would be to start by building a good core team of people you trust and can go above and beyond during the early start-up stage to build the foundation of a fast-growing business in the years to come. Investment in the right kind (not always correlated to highest paid) of human capital is highly underrated in India. As a Promoter one has to invest time in getting the team to buy into your vision for the business and ensuring that every day is a day when the company pushes in one direction to make a difference.