Till Debt Do Us Apart

Manthan that leads to various "amrit" and "vish"
... "fruitful truth" and "bitter truth"
...in a way metaphorical Dhanvarsha

We do manthan for our client.

Manthan means going in deep meditation and then insight jamming.

We have been doing that for Dhanvarsha.

And we have come up with a moot finding. 

We wanted to get at the root of "Why does Dhanvarsha exist?.

Or a much deeper question was "Why does lending exist?"

And "does lending means simply lending...or there are deeper meanings to it?"

So, its good to start with basics.

Customers (human) hire a product or a service because they need to get some job done.

The basic nature of the job remains fairly stable over time. 

The technologies or product that help customer do the job keep changing. 

As organization serving the customer, they need to be able to crack down deep to understand what job is it that the customer wants to get done and hence design our product around it. Let me share something what i mean by it. 

Let me start with a cliche, 'humans are social".

Hmmm!!!

What does it mean?

It means a lot of things depending on the filter you put on.

Need to belong or co-operate or pooling the risk or sharing responsibilities or memetic complexes or....

Ok!!!

Then what???!!!

If we nuance it further, we reach a point that humans have limitations. 

Limitation in terms of our sense-perceptions.

We can only see upto a distance.

We can smell something if its proximate to some distance.

We can touch if its immediately near.

We can hear only upto a distance.

In some sense, our sense-perceptions have a range...bounded by a range.

There are similar different forms of limitations. 

If we go back thousands of years, then we can imagine that finding food would be such an uncertain event. It would mean that we may venture out for hunting or foraging, but it was not at all certain that we shall surely find food. 

So, how did we overcome this limitation?

We started pooling our efforts, risks and rewards.

This is one of the key reasons of us being social.

Thus establishing a mutually agreeable banking channel. 

Sometimes i would get the food and i would share.

Sometimes you would get the food and share.

Sometimes we both would get different food and we would share.

Sometimes i would fall short of something and would get from you.

This give and take (also known as reciprocity) became an important fabric of being social.

Certain relations had no clear measurement of how much given and how much taken (example family or relatives or friendships).

Certain relations had easy give and take measurement...some level of leniencies.

Certain relations had very tight measurement of give and take.

(((There were other relations too...but that for another day.)))

Reciprocity (give and take) endured limitation. 

Reciprocity (give and take) endured shortfall. 

Now lets cut to our current times. 

Where are our limitations?

Where are our shortfalls?

Oh ! God !!!

(((sighing deeply now)))

Look around you.

Look at people around you.

They have expectations from you.

You have expectations from them.

How many times do we truly fulfill their expectations?

How many times do they truly fulfill our expectations?

We quickly realize that we all "fall short" or people's expectations. 

We experience "shortfalls".

And then we resort to various ways to manage these shortfalls.

In one such ways, we experience shortfalls in our monetary situations.  And then we look for ways to manage these shortfalls. 

However, the popular way to manage shortfall is by "borrowing" or "taking loan".

But is that the real solution?

Providing loan is an also option.

Using analytics to figure the credit-worthiness better and providing loan is also an option.

But, does that take care of the "shortfall" in real sense?

Could there be a disruptively innovative way to manage shortfalls? 

An inclusive lending company essentially is in the business of enabling their customers manage their shortfalls. 

However, "shortfall" is not simply a "financial shortfall".

• Shortfall could be a shortfall of business understanding.
• Shortfall could be a shortfall of marketing understanding.
• Shortfall could be a shortfall of economic and industry trend understanding.
• Shortfall could be shortfall of enough helping or skilled hands in running the business.
• Shortfall could be shortfall in managing emotional life, social life, etc.

• Sometimes the customers seems to be growing, but there could be limited understanding of the above and hence the money borrowed (though seemingly working) could be used more efficiently if the deeper level of shortfall is understood and worked upon.

Now that we realize this, could we get back to the moot question:

What business we are in?

An inclusive lending company is in the business of abundance.

I believe that an inclusive lending company is fundamentally in the business of helping their customers manage shortfalls (lack) of various kinds by creating abundance of various kinds. 

Knowing this, how to think about the product offering?

Fundamentally there are three kinds of business models.

Solutions Model (like Mckinsey, Bain, Accenture, TCS Consulting, etc). The problem is not clear. The solution team walks in. And figures out a solution. 

Process Model (like manufacturing unit or a process operations unit). The problem is clear. The product to solve it is clear. And it keeps going on with incremental innovation.

Networking Model (like association or platforms). Essentially selling memberships of various kinds. 

Given that we established earlier that the "shortfalls" are deeper rather than monetary, there is a need for our product to be able to deeply understand the customer and then cater a product which is not just money. 

So, when our unit of observation is the customer...meaning when our sales team approaches them...what is it that happens?

My guess is that every customer would have some strengths and challenges. Monetary shortfall would be a SYMPTOM of it. 

Our sales team or lead generation team needs to develop keen insight finding skills in order to gather information about the above...for a deeper sense of the various kinds of shortfalls.

In some sense, our sales team is actually a consultant's team...."Value Creation Officers". They need to be trained in this over next 3-6 months. 

And when the customer receives this kind of "consulting based value creating service", it means we are creating "Social Capital". 

What resources are required therefore?

(((needs to be probed and arrived at further...following are indicators only)))

• Extensive Training Resources for reimagining the roles: frontline and support staff. Moving from "Lack mindset" to an 'Abundance Mindset"
• A different "look" for our sales team (consultants' look)
• Rebranding marketing collaterals.

What process we need to excel in? 

(((needs to be probed and arrived at further...following are indicators only)))

• SME-Management Consulting.
• Measurability of Value Creation for customers.

Conclusion: 

Money is the modern version of age old give-and-take (reciprocal) relationships.

Only that we have become very tight give-and-take society.

This has depleted the kind of relationships where 

• eased-give-and-take happens...
• where pure giving (not expecting) happens

...meaning depletion of social capital.

We are not "only a lending company".

We are not "only into financial inclusion". 

We are in the business of creating abundance for our customers.

Creating abundance by various innovative ways to tackle customers true shortfalls.

When we do that, we truly create social capital. 

Moral of the Story

"Till debt do us apart" has the tone that we need to be able to reimagine the society such that "debts" of various kinds do not break the social capital of the fabric of humanity.