2 COMPANIES | 8 MARCH 2020 1 > N CRISIS N Signs of turnaround Backup plan, cups of coffee help visible: Prem Watsa T E NARASIMHAN Chennai, 7 March

Canadian billionaire and chairman of staff get PhonePe up and running Fairfax India Holdings Prem Watsa has observed that though 2019 was a tough Payments firm cent of them are women. Around year for the Indian economy, there are 24 GRUELLING HOURS half of the employees have been indications that the downward trend in came to a halt after holed up at PhonePe offices since some key economic indicators has bot- „ The PhonePe team, led by CTO Rahul Friday, according to sources. “A lot of tomed out. Owing to this, he expects a RBI superseded Chari and CEO SameerNigam, has fully coffee, availability of good food and gradual consumption-driven recovery. YES Bank’s board restored UPI on the paymentplatform bunk beds arranged by the compa- High reservoir levels and soil „ PhonePe has gotICICI Bankas its new ny kept them going,” said a person moisture levels point to a good rabi PEERZADA ABRAR & NEHA ALAWADHI partner. This was already in the works familiar with the matter. “The mood harvest that could cool inflation and Bengaluru/Delhi, 7 March among the employees was euphor- revive consumer demand. A fall in „ The firm is also in talks with various ic once the job was done.” the consumer price index could n Thursday evening, otherbanks such as HDFCBank, Axis Interestingly, on Friday, Noida- enable and encourage the Monetary PhonePe employees were Bank, SBI and RBLBankto become a based took a dig at its rival Policy Committee (MPC) to initiate Olooking forward to the week- multi-bankplatform PhonePe by inviting it to the Paytm one more policy rate cut, he said in end, but then they were caught by „ Customers and merchantpartners Bank UPI platform. “It already has his 19-page letter to shareholders. surprise when the Reserve Bank of don’tneed to change the UPI address huge adoption and can seamlessly “The worst may be behind us, and India (RBI) placed YES Bank under scale manifold to handle your busi- we may see a gradual consumption moratorium. „ PhonePe is accepted as a payment ness. Let’s get you back up, fast!” driven recovery,” he said. Fairfax plans to list PhonePe and its users were hit option at10 million outlets across 350 Paytm tweeted. From the end of 2016, India has infra investment arm the hardest as YES Bank is the cities in India “Paytm even started to poach moved up by 67 places to number 63 in Walmart-owned payments plat- PhonePe’s customers by sending the World Bank Business Report’s ‘ease Fairfax India is planning to list its form’s exclusive UPI (unified pay- PhonePe team member. The Bengaluru-based firm had in India. It has 200 million regis- messages to its merchant partners of doing business’ measure. subsidiary Anchorage Infrastructure ments interface) partner and the Industry executives said this was already anticipated such a situation tered users and does 570 million that read ‘QR code not working? His letter also said according to a Investments Holdings (AIIHL), which PhonePe app had to be shut down. an example on how to deal with and put in place contingency plans monthly transactions. Switch to Paytm All-in-One QR code World Bank director, this is the third has been created in June 2019. After a gruelling 24 hours, the adversity. PhonePe has ICICI Bank to protect the company and its cus- The company witnessed annu- now and accept unlimited pay- year in a row that India has made it to AIIHL is Fairfax’s flagship PhonePe team, led by chief tech- as its new partner. This was already tomers. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t have alised total payments value (TPV) ments’,” said a person familiar with the top 10 ‘improvers’ in doing busi- investment vehicle for airports and nology officer Rahul Chari and CEO in the works for a few months, been possible to be up and running of $180 billion and has 10 million the development. ness. This is a success that very few other infrastructure investments in Sameer Nigam, has fully restored according to sources. The firm is at this scale in just 24 hours,” said a merchants. Last year, the app, which What is remarkable is that a lot of countries have achieved over the last India. The plan is to eventually transfer UPI on the payment platform. The also in talks with other banks such as team member, who did not wish to went live in August 2016, crossed payments start-ups rallied behind 20 years since the project was started. all of Fairfax’s shares in Bangalore app is up and running again with all HDFC, , State Bank of be named. “We were not running the 5 billion transactions mark. PhonePe and offered help. Bipin At this rate, India could soon be among International Airport (BIAL) to AIIHL. payment instruments enabled. India (SBI) and RBL Bank to become like headless chicken. The ground- During the weekend, the Preet Singh, co-founder and CEO of the top 50 countries in which to do In December 2019, Fairfax India This is an engineering feat as it a multi-bank platform as recently work was already done and we just PhonePe’s offices in Delhi, Mumbai, MobiKwik, tweeted that at such a business. This is a testament to the signed definitive agreements with an was a multi-location effort and the mandated by the National executed the backup plan,” said the Pune and Bengaluru were buzzing time of systemic failure in the UPI economic reforms that Prime Minister investor, whereby it will transfer 43.6 teams worked on it round the clock, Payments Corporation of India person. with engineers and employees, exe- ecosystem, “We at MobiKwik extend Narendra Modi has been undertaking. per cent of BIAL out of the 54 per cent according to people familiar with (NPCI), according to a person from Indeed, the firm’s scale is mas- cuting the backup plan, which our full support to our friends However, 2019 has been a year of oppo- that it owns to AIIHL. The investor will the matter. “He (Rahul Chari) has the sector. sive, as PhonePe — which competes included coding continuously, Sameer Nigam and Ashneer Grover sites for India, it added. pay about $135 million to acquire from not slept in 24 hours and the teams Customers and merchant part- with rivals such as Alibaba-backed migrating users and looking at all (BharatPe co-founder) and others The Indian stock markets per- Fairfax India 11.5 per cent stake on a were working around the clock. But ners don’t need to change the UPI Paytm, and the touchpoints. who are impacted by YES Bank formed well in 2019 with a return of 11.9 fully diluted basis in AIIHL. This will to get this size of operations up and address and can continue using the — is accepted as a payment option A majority of the firm’s 1,200 mess. We are here to help and hope per cent for large-caps but economic result in the investor indirectly owning running is really amazing,” said a existing handle, said sources. at 10 million outlets across 350 cities employees are engineers, and 25 per there is a quick resolution”. growth decelerated sharply, during approximately 5 per cent in BIAL. The July-September 2019 with growth transaction values BIAL at $2.7 billion. declining to a 26-quarter low of 4.5 per T E NARASIMHAN Hold RBI accountable, bring Systems functioning 'without Rajkot civic body tells YES Bank cent. The economy is now forecast to grow by only five per cent for the year Consumer spending growth slowed bank under govt control: AIBEA any disruption', says PayNearby to release smart city fund ending March 31, 2020. The economy, and sales in many consumer sectors in the previous year, had returned to a like automobiles were hit, resulting in The All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) on Fintech startup PayNearby, which has a tie-up with YES The Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) has written to the growth level of 6.8 per cent after it had production cuts and plant shutdowns. Saturday said the Reserve must be held Bank to offer cardless and pinless ATM services to cus- for the release of the Smart City overcome the twin shocks of demon- This led to job losses, said Watsa. accountable and the government should start taking all the tomers, on Saturday said its systems are running without any Mission fund of ~160 crore stuck in the troubled YES Bank, etisation and implementation of the He added, the MPC cut policy rates private sector banks under its fold. The umbrella body of disruptions. The statement comes in the wake of disruption Gujarat deputy chief minister Nitin Patel said. goods and services tax (GST). by 135 basis points (bps) over five con- bank unions said lenders deal with public money and hard of Unified Payment Interface (UPI) offered by fintech play- Patel said that apart from the ~160 crore, the govern- The letter said, slowdown started secutive meetings, starting February earned savings, and “If banks mishandle and mismanage..., ers after YES Bank was put under moratorium by the RBI. ment has no other deposit in the capital-starved bank. with the withdrawal of easy credit for 2019. However, bank lending rates have criminal action should be taken against top officials of the “Our systems are up and running without any disruption. “As per information provided to me, around ~160 crore consumers, small and medium enter- moderated by only about 45 bps dur- bank who are responsible for the same, and severe punish- We are a strong technology backed fintech company and Smart City Mission fund of RMC is deposited in YES prises and real estate developers after ing this period because bank deposit ments should be awarded”. “In order to protect the interest have multiple banking partners,” the company said in a Bank.The money belongs to the Central government and the the IL&FS crisis in September 2018. rates did not fall in tandem with the of the depositors and bank's clients, YES Bank should be statement. “YES Bank has been a very valuable partner in our RMC, and hence the municipal corporation has written to Funding became difficult for non- policy rates. This was because of tight immediately brought under the public sector,” said C H journey and we are confident that they will soon bounce the RBI with the request to release the fund as per its require- banking financial companies (NBFCs) liquidity conditions and poor lending Venkatachalam, general secretary, AIBEA. PTI back,” the statement added. PTI ment,” Patel added. PTI and it fueled a downward spiral. as well as falling business confidence. Genpact looks to ethical artificial intelligence to chart path ahead NEHA ALAWADHI Concerns over bias in AI systems and New Delhi, 7 March their efficiency are not new, but there seems to be an increase in board-level recognition With artificial intelligence (AI) continuing to of the pitfalls of this. Genpact is using AI in play a strong role in 2020, the road ahead multiple ways, most notable being its AI will be built on “augmented Intelligence” — platform called Cora, which collects and a mix of human and machine intelligence analyses the available data and makes rec- that will give an edge to companies, says ommendations to clients. Genpact’s chief digital officer Sanjay One of the things it is working on is lan- Srivastava. guage. “We’re big believers in natural lan- Enterprises could see more positions guage processing. We apply it in invoice like digital ethics officers and move towards processing, contract reconciliation, any providing transformation as a service, an place you have to compare two large PDFs area Genpact is heavily focused on. and derive information,” said Srivastava. Srivastava said the company is in the fourth The next big area is computer vision, phase of evolution and will focus on areas which works on what are called knowledge like eliminating bias in intelligent systems graphs, or deep learning. “You can turn and digitising newer kinds of work. your iPhone and say, where's the nearest “With AI, it’s no longer that you have to Starbucks and it will tell you where it is. But Srivastava said Genpact is in the fourth protect your applications, because I can if you look at an invoice and on page num- phase of evolution and will focus on areas corrupt your data and then perfect AI will ber 23, (you say) the sales tax you applied for like eliminating bias in intelligent systems run on wrong data and give you the wrong in one state [that] you need to take to anoth- and digitising newer kinds of work results. I foresee that corporate boards are er state, there’s no in AI in the world today going to start thinking about ethical gover- that can solve it, because it’s not contextu- now starting to get defined. So I actually nance very differently. Just like we have alised,” he added. In this context, how do work with clients on this. I have them set up audit subcommittees and compensation digital officers deal with ethics, which are a framework....one of the dimensions is an subcommittees, the world is going to have subjective even offline? The answer, said awareness of the intended and non intend- digital ethics subcommittees as a board- Srivastava, is not hundred per cent laid out. ed usage parameters of the AI that we rec- level subcommittee,” said Srivastava. “But I do think that the parameters are ommend,” he said. Cognizant plans to hire sales staff with specialised digital skill sets DEBASIS MOHAPATRA ‘fit for growth’ plan under which it is Bengaluru, 7 March taking various cost-optimisation measures through which the company Cognizant is aggressively hiring sales hopes to save around $150-$200 million people proficient in digital technologies by the end of 2020. The IT services firm is in its bid to win more deals in the new also rationalising its employee pyramid technology space. by hiring more fresh graduates. It had The company, which is in the process earlier said the company would remove of hiring around 500-strong sales team, 10,000-12,000 mid- to senior-level has already taken staffers with specialist employees and redeploy about 5,000 of knowledge of working with SaaS those impacted. (Software-as-a-Service) players. “Out of On Cognizant’s decision to exit the the 500 sales people (the company is content moderation business, Frank said hiring), a large proportion has digital skill though it was a difficult decision, it was a set. So, we have sales specialist, who work step in the right direction. “While there with leading SaaS players like Amazon’s are a handful of clients in the content AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure,” (moderation) business, every firm is said Malcolm Frank, president of The IT services firm is also rationalising looking for digital solutions. So, the Cognizant Digital Business. “We also have its employee pyramid by hiring more opportunity is quite big in digital (space).” sales specialists with specific knowledge fresh graduates The IT firm last year decided to exit the in IoT (Internet of Things).” content moderation business, which has Frank also said deals coming in the proportion of digital revenues, but we will an overall revenue impact of $240-270 digital space are not large ones, but are still be doing a lot of systems (core million per annum. Cognizant, which more project-based which grow with revenue) work,” said Frank. beat street estimates with its fourth time. The Teaneck, New Jersey-based He also said the firm plans to hire or re- quarter performance, has projected that firm currently draws more than 35 per skill around 25,000 employees for its revenues will grow by 2-4 per cent in cent of its revenues from digital cashing in the opportunities arising in the the current year. Though this is the technologies and is witnessing a year-on- digital technology segment without lowest growth projection among its year growth of around 20 per cent in this divulging specific numbers. peers, investors believe that the firm’s segment. “We will definitely have a larger Currently, Cognizant is pursuing its performance may improve.