Aditya Birla Cap preps digital, payments push

livemint.com:

Aditya Birla Capital Ltd (ABCL) is looking to rev up its digital distribution game through its recently-incorporated subsidiary Aditya Birla Capital Digital (ABCD). The subsidiary, which last week received ₹50 crore from its parent, is planning to launch an app soon with an aim to “directly source customers for its financial services offerings," Pankaj Gadgil, group head-digital platforms, Aditya Birla Capital Ltd, told Mint. ABCL offers protection, investment, asset creation and transaction-related financial services such as insurance, mutual funds, stock investments, financing, wealth management, and advisory.

“The strategy that we thought through is we said we have a very large opportunity to create an omnichannel platform which will help us acquire digitally at scale, and also allow us to cross-sell from one line of business to another line of business. That is where we created another organization, which is called Aditya Birla Capital Digital," he added.

The omnichannel business has all three form-factors, which includes 1,400 branches across all businesses and 50% of these branches are co-located – meaning one premise, where some of these companies have branches which can engage with customers deeply. Second form factor is the virtual engagement point, that is, large inbound and outbound call centres to engage and serve customers better.

“And, we have a form factor coming up in the form of ‘mobile app’. This is ABCD’s creation for the overall group (Aditya Birla Group)—which has 20 crore customers broadly.

We will be launching this app shortly, catering to all the four requirements of the customer digitally," Gadgil said. Last year in March, the subsidiary also decided to cater to the transaction needs of the