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12 In the past, we have looked at data through limited sources
‘FOCUS
MORE ON HAVING
WOMEN STAY IN
THE BANDWAGON’
As a part of the Women in Engineering Day week, Express Computer has interviewed
th
June 26 , 2019 eminent personalities from the technology space to give more perspective on how
women are thriving in this industry.
A dream of making India a superpower and an extreme passion for science and
engineering, Express Computer gets in an exclusive conversation with Jaya
Vaidhyanathan, CEO of BCT Digital (Bahwan CyberTek group) to understand her
journey better.
Jaya has worked extensively on starting rt360 which is a risk management portfolio for
Fintech and joined BCT to kickstart their Fintech initiatives. The product portfolio now
addresses all types of risks a bank faces such as Model Risk, Operational Risk, Technology
Risk, and Liquidity Risk. The product is coupled with AI, RPA, and blockchain.
Knowing that gender biases exist, how difcult is it to be a woman and
thrive in your specic eld?
We have to go a long way to achieve the status of gender neutrality. Women have to
work twice as hard to prove themselves. The only way to get a seat at the board room
is to be exceptionally good at what you do. While we all have priorities, women seem
to have much more on their plate both at work and home, so keeping the focus is
critical to success. The only way to get over is to look at each challenge as a stepping
stone to grow. Be irreplaceable.
What role do you think technology plays in contemporary times in the BFSI
Industry?
Technology is the backbone for everything that we do today, and BFSI Industry is no
exception. There are significant issues at a national and global level that is confronting the
BFSI industry – for instance, Non-Performing Assets (NPA). To manage a problem of this
magnitude requires sophisticated and disruptive technologies like AI to dissect diversified
data from various sources. In the case of NPA, real-time alerts are essential for the BFSI
industry. The decision-making process must be shortened to split-seconds synthesizing
technology.
36 rt360 Less risk, more coffee
to understand that this is a challenge for every new idea or
innovation and not limited to us. To cite an example, we
such as core banking, loan origination, etc., to name a few.
However, to tackle large scale issues like the NPA, the faced considerable resistance in the Indian eco-system when
quantum of data is enormous. A few human beings can’t we introduced our suite of products, as both the idea and
comprehend and make intelligent decisions within a short company were new. Qualifying a public sector RFP in India
requires several criteria and parameters. Having repeatable
span. Technologies like Early Warning System that uses AI,
today can quickly ingest the data and provide insights and
references within the industry is a challenge not only for us
alerts that can be accessed on digital mediums and in but for all companies following the same path to success. To
formats that are easy for human consumption. Data includes
summarize, early adoption is challenging, and it is a
information from credit bureaus, real-time alerts on rewarding experience once you overcome this phase.
corporate actions, etc., through digital sources that If you are a Founder & CEO, it is always more challenging
synthesize huge volumes of not just structured but
unstructured data sources as well, thereby making because you are selling your dreams and recruiting people
to make believe those dreams. You take up a huge
technology inevitable in decision making. An AI or ML
propelled technology layer can analyze three thousand responsibility not only in recruitment but also in ensuring
different data points arriving at decisions based on intelligent that the vision stays put and sees through success.
pattern matching accurately within microseconds. Challenging factors can be many, ranging from early
Therefore, I believe that technology is irreplaceable and a adoption by customers, to recruiting the right employees
crucial component of the BFSI industry. and getting an efficient team in place, to getting the right
investors on board and getting your shareholders to get to
Can we rely on technology solely to be the panacea buy your dreams. Indeed, it is most definitely glorious when
for all problems? If so, how? you succeed.
Technology solely cannot be the panacea for all evils. It is
perhaps an enabler for intelligent application from strictly a How can we have more women joining the
domain perspective. We need to be technology agnostic. It bandwagon?
Statistically speaking, there has been a phenomenal rise in
may seem paradoxical to my response to the previous
question. However, the fact remains that how we use the number of women joining engineering colleges in India
technology broadly depends on our domain expertise. as compared to two decades ago. However, we have what
Once we know what we require, then we look out for we refer to as the revolving door syndrome. To be more
specific, once we recruit bright and young women at the
appropriate technology levers we can use to get to where
we want. In my opinion, technology is a means to an end entry stage, we invariably end up losing them through the
and is not a panacea to all problems. middle-management layers. Eventually, there are very few
women at the top. I believe that we should be focusing
What are the immediate and long-term milestones more on how to get women to stay in the bandwagon
for your company? rather than just getting them to join it. Realistically there is
As a company, we have been ardent advocates of being no magic pill or one-stop solution that educates on what we
local for vocal. A few years ago, we developed a suite of need to do. Active interventions from the entire eco-system
products in India, uniquely designed to address the like family, society, the government, the company, etc., are
country’s problems. Not only have we taken our products required to make this a viable solution.
made locally to a global center stage but also the various
economies of GCC & US. We continue to upgrade existing
products and build new products for India that is scalable to
global markets.
Challenges are an inevitable part of the business.
Could you highlight some you had encountered?
I believe that every innovative idea goes through a
challenging phase of acceptance. Our initial challenge was
with early adoption. However, once we crossed the chasm,
the growth was exponential. In my experience, I have come
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