Raj N was unconventional in many ways. Born to an academic-oriented family, Raj was always spotted not in classrooms and libraries, but sports grounds. While he did score good marks, his affinity to explore the unknown was quite a string. This affinity only grew with time, and soon Raj had a list of ideas that he thought were worth exploring. Meanwhile, his family grew restless with each day that he refused to conform to the family norm.
With an exceptional mind brimming with ideas and a vivid rebellious streak to his character, young Raj took part in the anti-Mandal agitation at the Delhi University. He was one of the key leaders in the movement that shook the capital in the early ’90s. Nonetheless, his political ambitions were cut off when he received news of securing an MBA seat in the prestigious New York University. During his college days, Raj also tapped into his potential to be an entrepreneur and worked hard to push his limits. By the time the offer from the US arrived, Raj was already an MBA graduate from the University of Delhi who had floated his first venture—a financial product company.
First Real Corporate Stint
Raj’s father, a disciplinarian, was least happy with his son’s political activities in Delhi. However, the New York university opportunity made him happy. So, Raj sold his first venture and packed his bags for the US to obtain another Masters in Business Administration from New York University. Soon after, he was cherry-picked by PricewaterhouseCoopers to work for them.
This career path boosted Raj’s inclination towards business. He joined their Chicago branch in the Management Consulting Service (MCS) practice, where he advised multinational companies on business process re-engineering (BPR). However, Raj pined for his motherland and longed to return. When he understood he could no longer stay back, he decided to come home, redefine his business ideas and flex his entrepreneurial skills.
Touchdown India, Raj N came with a whole new skillset that flaunted extraordinary leadership skills and a flair for entrepreneurship, with a special dexterity to listen to people and help them. Armed with his formidable skillset, Raj established eYantra-a corporate merchandising platform, which is one of the largest in the world and has successfully raised multiple rounds of Private Equity funding where Investors have exited with good returns-in 2001.
Soon after, he birthed LoyltyRewardz, a venture raised 750k USD investment when it was an idea on paper but returned 33X back to its investors in 6 years. He also found, Zaggle, a venture that builds world-class financial solutions and products to manage the business expenses of corporates, SMEs, & Startups through automated and innovative workflows. “I believe what is taught in school and colleges need not be the ultimate truth in practical life. Believing in what we think is right builds a strong character. Exposure in the early part of the years allows you to build the listen up capability, which helps later on. I contributed to the Indian startup ecosystem with over 29 investments so far.
I provided a platform for SME’s and corporate clients for their employee reimbursements. We also provided a digital platform for their employees to track their expense on a daily on-going basis so that it becomes easier for them to track their daily expenses in their day-to-day work life and calculate their expenses manually. Bringing in the digital technology, through the Zaggle platform I guess, has helped a lot of merchants over the years,” says Raj.
No Hassle, Thanks Zaggle!
Raj’s vision while setting up Zaggle was to become a Global Digital Bank. Today, Zaggle eradicates the complex and tedious workflow followed in organisations, discrepancies arising from payments that are still made in cash, issues like no real-time control or visibility over the business spends, manual accounting and a reconciling stack of receipts and spreadsheets, excessive use of human resources, and risk of frauds and duplication.
“We wanted to take Banking to Corporates and Consumers. Today the Banking processes and workflows are broken, which are mostly manual and partly digital, making Banking an extremely difficult process. With our experience and interaction with various business groups, we realised that businesses face many problems in managing their financial requirements and expense management. We figured out that payments and accounting in conventional ways are broken, inefficient, and sluggish. That is where our core offering came into play,” Raj informs.
The team spent months understanding and researching several pain points and successfully started an innovative financial revolution. Under Raj’s guidance, the team directed all their efforts towards building a host of products and services that could solve the financial needs of the businesses. “We ended up completely reinventing the business financial flow and expense management. We aspire to create unique products and services that solve businesses and corporates’ pain points by deploying world-class technologies. We endeavour to achieve this through the discipline of execution, innovation, and rapid product development. Our major focus has been committed to assisting corporates in creating a productive and efficient organisation. The team at Zaggle is extremely passionate and works relentlessly towards the vision, building one layer at a time,” Raj iterates.
Today, Zaggle has 2,600+ clients and over 3.5 million users. With offices across 10 cities, Zaggle has around 200+ employees and is geared towards building Network Agnostic Payment System and Customer Experience. Zaggle’s platforms include Zaggle Propel and Zaggle Save for SME’s and corporates to help them with expense management. While Zaggle Propel is an integrated platform for workforce reward, recognition, engagement and state-of-art AI-powered performance management, helping organisations align their people to the company goals; Zaggle Save is an all-in-one business expense management and employee benefits platform that empowers you to save taxes and spend smarter, therefore saving time and money resulting in a happy and satisfied workforce.
The Zaggle team aspire to create unique products and services that solve the pain points of businesses and corporates by deploying world-class technologies. “We endeavour to achieve this through the discipline of execution, innovation, and rapid product development. Our major focus has been committed to assisting corporates in creating a productive and efficient organisation. Our mission is to build state-of-art financial solutions workflow and products which would help automate and empower businesses to increase efficiency, accuracy, transparency and productivity and which would eventually help us to achieve the goal of becoming a useful global digital bank,” Raj explains.
Zaggle’s Team Spirit
Just like its founder, Zaggle, with its innovative spirit deeply entrenched in the FinTech industry, ensures an engaging and exciting environment to work in. Although the pandemic has pushed businesses into an accelerated state of digitisation, with Work From Home becoming popular, Zaggle employees have been dedicatedly working in this tough time. “At Zaggle, you will find yourself surrounded by a network of hardworking and likeminded individuals who truly believe in the business’ product and service. The Team Leaders have been digitally in touch with the team members to get the work to deliver, attendance has been marked digitally. It’s great to have such kind of commitment from our team members during such tough times. While making use of tools enabling remote working, cybersecurity is on top of our mind. With FinTech operating at the forefront of innovation, Zaggle is both flexible and adaptable to succeed in an ever-changing and dynamic environment,” Raj adds.
Raj observes that organisations are counting on a fintech revolution as it can offer solutions to the unprecedented challenges that Covid-19 has brought in. Digital Payments, Open Banking, Mobile Banking/Internet Banking and Peer-to-Peer Lending are some of the major trends that Covid-19 has accelerated in the FinTech sector. The post-COVID-19 era will bring forward a new normal—continuity in opting digitisation. He claims that payment innovations, rise in digital banking and organisations opting for hyper-personalised tech solutions are some of the trends that the fin-tech industry must watch out for in 2021.
“At Zaggle, we are aggressively and relentlessly working towards launching our Neo-Banking platform. This Open Banking Platform will help corporates for all transactions in the Bank and bid in the real-time for loans where all of it will be self-automated and will give a performance, balance sheet in a single rack. On the global expansion front, our next target is London, where we expect to commence operations in the next three months. Technology has been a great enabler during these troubled times for the businesses and we, being a part of the tech community, have helped our clients and constituents with many innovative developments to overcome the business challenges they have faced and have vowed to help more clients in the future,” Raj concludes.