We don’t view Leegality as a vendor. It's a partner. So the partner understands the changing dynamics of the business and can adjust accordingly. I think the partnership with Leegality has been successful in defining a running partnership, which may be changing all the time, but the dynamics of it are addressed as we go along. So that's why you don't hear any issues and gaps coming in.

We have a portal in which all the documents are stored. In the portal all the details for respective merchants are stored, and that's where one can go and retrieve all the digital details.

The cost of managing and cost of acquisition goes down

The benefits of digitisation versus paperwork are in terms of turnaround times. And so the whole process of enrollment end to end can take as less as 15 minutes.

When the loan officer uploads it physically, after that the physical paper has to be accounted for. It is generally a tough exercise [to] account for every paper.

The issue with [the physical process] was mainly about the post signing, the storage and management of the documents. It was next to impossible to make sure that every document is accounted for. There's a lot of paperwork required and there will always be delays in reaching the stamp papers because our field officer does not usually go to the regional office to deposit this. He only does his beat at the local level. So these issues are quite humongous. And if you do it on scale, it'll be very costly to do this. So physical procurement for the stamp papers would be pretty onerous because each of our regional offices would need to procure its quota of stamp papers separately. So that's a massive administrative hassle.

It would take generally around seven to 15 days to get [the agreement] uploaded

I like Leegality’s Dashboard. With the Dashboard we get a feeling that we are in full control of how document executions are happening. If something is wrong, we can actually see it in the dashboard and take corrective action. Any integration has issues that crop up from time to time. Usually we don’t know where the issue arises - whether its with the integrated component or the main component. With the Leegality Dashboard we get a clear idea about what is going wrong at which stage. This has given us better control of the entire execution process.

Leegality's team has been very proactive in terms of what more can be done. They are constantly looking for solutions to optimize our digital documentation journeys. The whole engagement has been very successful because there's been a two-way interaction in terms of how Leegality can help Samasta. The Leegality team is very responsive and the entire implementation has worked like a charm.

Thanks to Leegality’s integration with with Craft Silicon's LOS BR.Net, the implementation was very quick. It took our technology partner less than a month to integrate with Leegality, test it and make it available for us. Also, our team took to Leegality like fish to water. This was one of the projects that went better than we had planned

We can disburse more loans per branch centre per day. Thanks to this new digital paperwork process, our quantum of loans disbursed per branch has gone up by approximately 30% - from about 30-35 loans per day to 40-45 loans per day.

The flow of documents - to the RO and - from RO to the storage vendor has been completely eliminated. So no more scanning, couriering and physical storage of the document.

The entire process post-signing has completely changed. The customer has access to the entire loan kit - we send the completed kit to them via SMS. The customer now has secure access to the soft copy of the loan kit, even if she loses the 1 page copy. Additionally, the flow of documents - to the RO and - from RO to the storage vendor has been completely eliminated. So no more scanning, couriering and physical storage of the document.

The branch was very eager to digitize this process - we faced no resistance from them. In the old process, sometimes the printer would not work and sometimes there would be no paper. All those issues are now gone. All our branch officers have to focus on now is get the customer to execute the document. Once that is done - the system takes care of the rest. Now the branch officers can spend the saved time for onboarding new customers and servicing new customers.

Earlier it used to take about 90 minutes per day for each centre of a branch to execute documents for customers. Now this same process takes less than 30 minutes per day - a saving of more than 1 hour per day for each centre of a branch. And this half an hour that it still takes is not for the digital process. It is more for getting customers ready and setting other things in place before execution on the tablet can be initiated.

We spoke to a few vendors. But after evaluation we realized Leegality would be the best fit for us because it was a “plug and play” solution with smooth integration. With Leegality, we realized we would be able to go live fast - and grow our digital document processes at a large scale very fast.

When we looked at the cost and the efficiency of going digital, it was a no-brainer that, we need to move to digital execution

From the branch, the documents are shifted through courier to the regional office. From the regional office, they are shifted to storage. At each step - there is a human resource cost because someone at each location has to make sure everything is in order everyday

When the entire process is paper-based - there is tremendous oversight needed at all levels everyday. If you disburse 30-35 loans in a short period of time in a branch - one or more sheets slip away from the loan document kit and has to be retrieved

Once the loans have been sanctioned, the branch team will have to download and print these documents. Then they have to get each page signed by the customer. One branch would typically cater to 30-35 customers per day across multiple centres. The branch would need to make sure everything is okay and review documents to see if everything is in order. So this whole paperwork process takes around 90 minutes everyday for each centre (each branch has many centres)

There is also the review and querying of these documents at the RO, and RO will call them and say if something is missing. The branch team would then have to spend time tracing the missing document.

There are logistical issues with paper. Sometimes the printers don't work. Sometimes papers won't be there. So someone has to get all these things resolved.

We have over a thousand branches - and we disburse almost every day from these branches. So the total number of disbursals per day is very significant. This incurs a lot of direct costs - printing costs, paper costs, HR costs, courier costs, scanning costs and storage costs.

A. The cost of printing - including maintaining the printer to ensure it's in working condition

B. The cost of paper

C. HR costs - because someone in each location is spending time and energy making sure documents are being executed, handled and retrieved properly

D. Courier costs - for the branch to RO transfer and for RO to storage vendor transfer

E. Scanning costs - when the storage vendor scans the documents

F. Storage costs - charged to us by the storage vendor

Every night, documents signed by borrowers are sent from the branches to the Regional Office. The Regional Office performs another layer of verification the next day. If the verification passes, the Regional Office sends these documents to our storage vendors. The storage vendors receive the document and scan them for future retrieval. This entire process would take a total of 3 to 4 days.