Sastra Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Sastra Technologies: Unleashing unparalleled SaaS products in a cost effective manner

India is of late on its path to become a hotbed of budding leaders as it has witnessed numerous startup ventures in diversified fields. Multifarious blooming entrepreneurs have brought innovations and technological advancement which have made life much easier for every stratum of society.

But a few of such startup companies have done exceptionally well. Sastra Technologies is one such technology firm that serves new age Fintech companies, small Finance Banks, Payment Banks, Banks, Non-Banking Financial Companies and Financial institutions. It is working with a philosophy to develop products that are cost effective so that their clients derive value using those products. Since its inception, it has striven hard to work on its philosophy by embracing cloud technologies and developing unique capabilities. This allows the company to offer a value proposition that is unmatched in industry today. It has an enviable cache of Software Architects, UI (User Interface) & UX (User Experience) Engineers, Database Engineers, Front end scripting Engineers, Server script Engineers, Performance Tuning specialists, Analytics Engineers, Content professionals and Social Media professionals. The company is headquartered in the Southern Temple city of Chennai. It has a widespread pool of clientele which reflects its global nature. It is having clients in major cities which include Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, London, Singapore and Sydney just to name a few. It is incorporated as Private Limited Company with two founders contributing to the Equity.

Being an open source firm, it believes in meritocracy in recruitment. It employs people based on their contributions to open source projects and demonstrated knowledge of deliveries using LAMP and LEMP. It occasionally takes those people who do not possess these skills but show potential to learn things. It trains such people to become dexterous which helps the company and the person in the long run. The company has given the flexibility to its employees to work via Telecommuting and BYOD depending upon the circumstances.

The company offers a host of SaaS (Software as a service) products which include CRM Suite, Lending & Repayment Management, Financial Accounting, Call Centre Management and Delinquency Management etc. The CRM suite named AnyBank is specifically created for Banking and Financial Institutions. Its services include Origination, Documents Management, Eligibility check, Norms, Scoring, Robotic Underwriting, Ratio Calculations, Credit Bureau Checks, Field Investigations and Risk Management etc. Apart from this, it has a fees collection application named Uniview which gives a choice of nine payment gateways aimed at Colleges, Schools and Social Clubs. The company is focused on delivering a value that is unparalleled in the industry. It believes that deploying technology should reduce the cost of performing a transaction rather than increasing it. The company has a rich product portfolio and it intends to use its financial resources to pursue and acquire customers.

Differentiating Factors

Client across the globe are worried about declining revenues and rising IT budgets. To be competitive, the company follows agile processes like DevOps and Continuous Integration. This helps it spin a server within 60 seconds which further helps in deploying updates to its SaaS products without downtime. This helps the company provide a service that is incomparable in the industry today. The larger companies are focused on revenue and large ticket deals. The company is focused on niche Fintech segment creating products and services that solve very specific gaps in the industry. Its SaaS product portfolio is a testimony to that. Since the inception of the company, it has embraced the cloud. It has been frugal in its spending and has accumulated no fixed assets. This has helped the company focus on its core competencies. It has progressively moved up the value chain by taking a calibrated approach to introduce new technology or platforms to the development team. It has a solid GIT repository that has all its software assets, a database of features and bugs flagged and tagged with attributes like severity and browser version. It has several servers housed on the cloud housed in various data centres from New York to Sydney. It manages all of this from Chennai. The company feels that any company should be lean and not rely on a hierarchy for its operations. A flat structure suits the company pretty well.

The company fathoms the need to fund the company's growth by infusing additional capital either by way of a venture capital investor or private Equity. Currently, it does not see debt as a viable option of funding the company's growth.

Major Milestones

The company in its journey has achieved a plethora of milestones. A few of which has been mentioned below.

• December 2015 – It launched an automated CPU to CPU interface to query the CIBIL database and download the reports.
• April 2016 – Launched its portal for Prepaid cards. The product works with Gem cards as the Card Processor.
• July 2017 – Launched AB Suite which is its new age CRM offering for Banks and Financial Institutions.
• April 2018 – Launched Bit Carrots which is its Loyalty and Gratification application. 

Future Plans

The company is optimistic about a surge in automation with an aim to reduce costs. Organizations are likely to bring their stipulated processes on the cloud to gain an edge over their peers and competitors. To this end, it has invested in a large talent pool of BPM (Business Process Management) resources to create micro-services for consumption by devices. It also believes that business process will be consumed using rich user interfaces on several devices from Mobile to large panel displays. To meet this, it has invested in a rich cache of UI and UX engineers. It also sees a good traction in Hindsight, Insight and Foresight analytics. Its data analytics team has a rich experience in Natural Language Processing, Charting, Social Media analytics etc. Its next product in the pipeline is a Trade Finance application using the Corda blockchain product.

The company does not pay much attention on the disruptions elsewhere in the world because it understands that Technology is an enabler and will be an enabler for a long to come in India. It advices budding entrepreneurs to look beyond the hype and advocates them to develop solutions for practical problems.