As an organisation, we want to be responsible, we want to be an environmentally friendly organisation. Right? We are making constant efforts to cut the use of paper wherever possible.

Especially with a lot of new age fintechs [coming in], there are few things which customers just expect. They take it for granted. It becomes very difficult to explain why we are not offering them a solution which is at par with what the rest of the industry [is offering]. So we were able to match those expectations. Also, it became very easy for us because customers can then sign it at their convenient time. This was very important from a customer perspective

Within ten minutes you can actually complete the entire process if your Aadhaar authentication and verification etc is in place. And then I can release the money on the same day, which was very unlikely in the old process where you had to sign paperwork, and multiple signatures had to be checked.

One important factor was also the coverage across jurisdictions. Some of the other solutions that we were exploring were only supporting areas where e-stamp is available, while Leegality did support all the states. This was important from a strategic perspective because, eventually, we want our solution to be available to every corner in the country. Leegality’s solution has helped improve our outreach, as sometimes, we may not consider certain remote locations because of managing logistics.

We saw how user friendly this is - both from the customer point of view as well as from the employee point of view. How seamless it was to integrate the whole solution and explain it to our people. How easy it will be to use at the end of the day [was important].

We looked at the use cases, which were important for us and the ease of use of the features that Leegality provided. We also got some good references about the solution from our parent group as well because they had been using the Leegality solution already. And overall, the experience of using Leegality was very good

We did explore some other solutions along with Leegality. We did a preliminary evaluation. We did a POC with all these solutions. And based on the feedback where our ops team was also involved, we eventually chose Leegality.

What if the one parent is there and the other parent is not there. This means I have to leave the documents and come back. I leave it overnight, and I don't know who's really signed the document. There’s less control over monitoring that particular aspect. From a risk point of view, it is very important.

When a document gets signed outside [our] environment, there is a risk about who's actually signing the document

In situations where the students are in a different place, parents are in a different place: the contract documents keep travelling from one place to the other. We don’t have much control over it, and something can get lost on the way in transit

Many times customers actually come pretty late to request for the release of the money. And they have deadlines which are set by universities. So usually that just puts pressure on teams to get the physical agreements done in a pretty short window. That was another challenge the team was facing. And, of course, during this period, the customer is under a lot of stress. And our team is also under a lot of stress because they have to actually finish this task in a very short span of time.

We spent considerable time as a company, whether it is in the office or outside on the field, to go meet the customer at a convenient time to get those signatures done. A lot of back and forth that used to happen - whether it's there in the residence or at their [place of] employment. So from an efficiency point of view, it was something that we were looking at. All of this was inefficient in the earlier process

The customers have to come to our office and sign it, which means we are imposing inconvenience. [There is] one office in a big city, in a metro city, and customers have to come all the way just to make those signatures

It would be T plus one on both sides. I send it, and the customer receives it the next day. Again, the customer signs it and sends it back to me. So [it would take] anywhere between one to four days to complete that piece of signature

On the field, even if we remove the whole back and forth possibility, normally travel in a city would take anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour. Then spend about 45 minutes with the customer and travel back that much. So it would take anywhere between two and a half to three hours per case

Definitely. Leegality is an enabler. In this industry, one of the key things is how to make the customer experience seamless. That is the endeavor for every organization who is there in the market. I think this (digitizing paperwork) helps us a lot because home buying is one of the most important and most difficult investment in anybody's life. It involves a huge amount and a lot of documentation. And hence, customers are always anxious in this entire process. The more we digitize, the more we are transparent, and more we are able to commit a timeline. I think this industry itself will now see much more confidence among buyers. The industry itself can undergo a big change. Because ultimately this runs with the confidence of the buyer that he can get a loan seamlessly. He can get a house in his name and complete the entire process within a time frame without escalating costs. I think that is what the customer requests. And once that is what the customer requires, I think all of us has to follow suit and find ways to really cater to our segment of customers the best we can

The transition was very smooth. We had Mr. Manan (Leegality Sales rep) taking the lead, and then Ms. Asmita was allotted to us as our account manager – who were hand holding us throughout. And we also had a team in the form of a couple of senior people who were taking the lead for this project. They worked along with Mr. Manan and Ms. Asmita who took us through everything step-by-step. The entire procedure was smooth and the go live day was completely hassle free.

The support has been tremendous

Implementing NeSL via Leegality is easier than directly implementing NeSL. Because Leegality has the technical know-how. So our integration timelines were easy and shorter because we did it through Leegality

With NeSL the advantage is that stamp paper is procured on the live platform, in real time. You don't want to buy the original and then store it and then scan. So that's completely done away with. We buy the stamp paper live. We pay the stamp duty live. And at the end of the day, we get this digital agreement to the information utility, NeSL - the only information utility in India. So the data of the debt is always available now. It’s like hitting two birds with one shot. You are getting the agreement executed. At the same time, this data is stored with the information utility database as well

Inspection will happen, say, a year later. To go and find a customer to get the documents signed again then is a humongous task. You will not even find where they are. If there are two or three borrowers then it’s a challenge to get the inspection and audit comments rectified. Today, with digitization, we don't have to bother and worry about that comment because everything is digitally done, everything is filled, everything is signed. It's all legally valid. Today there’s an audit trail. We know from which IP the signing was done. There is a photograph of the customer doing it. So this gives a huge confidence that we can scale our business without fearing any error or any comments in audit, which in the future can bite us back.

The borrower may be a very good person and the branch may get carried away by their relationship with that particular borrower. They might tell the borrower that “now you get the signature of the guarantor or mortgagor” and the borrower will take the documents with him. However, that is not the instruction we have given to them. There is a possibility of compromise at the branch level. With digital documentation we can avoid all these things

All the signatures required appear in the right place with Aadhaar OTP signature. So there is no error at all while signing. No missing signatures anymore. All the columns are filled up digitally so there is no manual intervention

In many cases, we used to have people that are not available here [physically]. So they would give power of attorney. And later sometimes there would be disputes where they would say that there was no such power of attorney. In this present [digital] scenario, there is absolutely no need for the power of attorney. They can do the transaction sitting in any part of the world. So the need for, and the dispute relating to power of attorney, is automatically taken care of

The feedback of the team is tremendous because there is a lot of work which has gone out of branches - printing, stamping and scanning. All those things are gone. So people are appreciating and asking for it. They are finding value in it. And this gave them confidence that they can meet the customer and give something which somebody else in the market cannot give at this point in time. That is the confidence that the team on the ground is having.